he
stammered. "She is a very old woman, and without anything to eat she may
not live long."

"They ought to take her into the Aged Widows' Home. I'm sure I gave her
_my_ votes."

"God shall bless you for it. But people say I was lucky enough to get
my Benjamin into the Orphan Asylum, and that I ought not to have brought
her from Poland. They say we grow enough poor old widows here."

"People say quite right--at least she would have starved in, a Yiddishe
country, not in a land of heathens."

"But she was lonely and miserable out there, exposed to all the malice
of the Christians. And I was earning a pound a week. Tailoring was a
good trade then. The few roubles I used to send her did not always reach
her."

"Thou hadst no right to send her anything, nor to send for her. Mothers
are not everything. Thou didst marry my cousin Gittel, peace be upon
him, and it was thy duty to support _her_ and her children. Thy mother
took the bread out of the mouth of Gittel, and but for her my poor
cousin might have been alive to-day. Believe me it was no _Mitzvah_."

_Mitzvah_ is a "portmanteau-word." It means a commandment and a good
deed, the two conceptions being regarded as interchangeable.

"Nay, thou errest there," answered Moses. "'Gittel was not a phoenix
which alone ate not of the Tree of Knowledge and lives for ever. Women
have no need to live as long as men, for they have not so many
_Mitzvahs_ to perform as men; and inasmuch as"--here his tones
involuntarily assumed the argumentative sing-song--"their souls profit
by all the _Mitzvahs_ performed by their husbands and children, Gittel
will profit by the _Mitzvah_ I did in bringing over my mother, so that
even if she did die through it, she will not be the loser thereby. It
stands in the Verse that _man_ shall do the _Mitzvahs_ and live by them.
To live is a _Mitzvah_, but it is plainly one of those _Mitzvahs_ that
have to be done at a definite time, from which species women, by reason
of their household duties, are exempt; wherefore I would deduce by
another circuit that it is not so incumbent upon women to live as upon
men. Nevertheless, if God had willed it, she would have been still
alive. The Holy One, blessed be He, will provide for the little ones He
has sent into the world. He fed Elijah the prophet by ravens, and He
will never send me a black Sabbath."

"Oh, you are a saint, Meshe," said Malka, so impressed that she
admitted him to the equality of the secon