hat
England was well named, for to the Jew it was verily the Enge-Land,
which in German signifies the country without elbow room. Moses Ansell
chuckled softly and beatifically when he emitted the remark that
surprised all who knew him. But then it was the Rejoicing of the Law and
the Sons of the Covenant had treated him to rum and currant cake. He
often thought of his witticism afterwards, and it always lightened his
unwashed face with a happy smile. The recollection usually caught him
when he was praying.

For four years after Mrs. Ansell's charity funeral the Ansells, though
far from happy, had no history to speak of.

Benjamin accompanied Solomon to _Shool_ morning and evening to say
_Kaddish_ for their mother till he passed into the Orphan Asylum and
out of the lives of his relatives. Solomon and Rachel and Esther went to
the great school and Isaac to the infant school, while the tiny Sarah,
whose birth had cost Mrs. Ansell's life, crawled and climbed about in
the garret, the grandmother coming in negatively useful as a safeguard
against fire on the days when the grate was not empty. The _Rube's_ own
conception of her function as a safeguard against fire was quite other.

Moses was out all day working or looking for work, or praying or
listening to _Drashes_, by the _Maggid_ or other great preachers. Such
charities as brightened and warmed the Ghetto Moses usually came in for.
Bread, meat and coal tickets, god-sends from the Society for Restoring
the Soul, made odd days memorable. Blankets were not so easy to get as
in the days of poor Gittel's confinements.

What little cooking there was to do was done by Esther before or after
school; she and her children usually took their mid-day meal with them
in the shape of bread, occasionally made ambrosial by treacle The
Ansells had more fast days than the Jewish calendar, which is saying a
good deal. Providence, however, generally stepped in before the larder
had been bare twenty-four hours.

As the fast days of the Jewish calendar did not necessarily fall upon
the Ansell fast days, they were an additional tax on Moses and his
mother. Yet neither ever wavered in the scrupulous observance of them,
not a crumb of bread nor a drop of water passing their lips. In the keen
search for facts detrimental to the Ghetto it is surprising that no
political economist has hitherto exposed the abundant fasts with which
Israel has been endowed, and which obviously operate as a dole i