zen little tasks which no Jew could perform on
the Sabbath. The simple prohibition to labor on the Sabbath day had
been construed by zealous commentators to mean much more. One must not
even touch any instrument of labor or commerce, as an axe or a coin.
It was forbidden to light a fire, or to touch anything that contained
a fire, or had contained fire, were it only a cold candlestick or a
burned match. Therefore the lamp at which I was staring must burn till
the Gentile woman came to put it out.

The light did not annoy me in the least; I was not thinking about it.
But apparently it troubled somebody else. I saw my father come from
his room, which also adjoined the living-room. What was he going to
do? What was this he was doing? Could I believe my eyes? My father
touched the lighted lamp!--yes, he shook it, as if to see how much oil
there was left.

I was petrified in my place. I could neither move nor make a sound. It
seemed to me he must feel my eyes bulging at him out of the dark. But
he did not know that I was looking; he thought everybody was asleep.
He turned down the light a very little, and waited. I did not take my
eyes from him. He lowered the flame a little more, and waited again. I
watched. By the slightest degrees he turned the light down. I
understood. In case any one were awake, it would appear as if the lamp
was going out of itself. I was the only one who lay so as to be able
to see him, and I had gone to bed so early that he could not suppose I
was awake. The light annoyed him, he wanted to put it out, but he
would not risk having it known.

I heard my father find his bed in the dark before I dared to draw a
full breath. The thing he had done was a monstrous sin. If his mother
had seen him do it, it would have broken her heart--his mother who
fasted half the days of the year, when he was a boy, to save his
teacher's fee; his mother who walked almost barefoot in the cruel snow
to carry him on her shoulders to school when she had no shoes for him;
his mother who made it her pious pride to raise up a learned son, that
most precious offering in the eyes of the great God, from the hand of
a poor struggling woman. If my mother had seen it, it would have
grieved her no less--my mother who was given to him, with her youth
and good name and her dowry, in exchange for his learning and piety;
my mother who was taken from her play to bear him children and feed
them and keep them, while he sat on the benches of