ker had another daughter,
girl of thirteen, and he pressed my father to take her in her sister's
place. At the same time the marriage broker proposed another match;
and my father's poor cousins bristled with importance once more.

Somehow or other my father succeeded in getting in a word at the
family councils that ensued; he even had the temerity to express a
strong preference. He did not want any more of the undertaker's
daughters; he wanted to consider the rival match. There were no
serious objections from the cousins, and my father became engaged to
my mother.

This second choice was Hannah Hayye, only daughter of Raphael, called
the Russian. She had had a very different bringing-up from Pinchus,
the grandson of Israel Kimanyer. She had never known a day of want;
had never gone barefoot from necessity. The family had a solid
position in Polotzk, her father being the owner of a comfortable home
and a good business.

Prosperity is prosaic, so I shall skip briefly over the history of my
mother's house.

My grandfather Raphael, early left an orphan, was brought up by an
elder brother, in a village at no great distance from Polotzk. The
brother dutifully sent him to heder, and at an early age betrothed him
to Deborah, daughter of one Solomon, a dealer in grain and cattle.
Deborah was not yet in her teens at the time of the betrothal, and so
foolish was she that she was afraid of her affianced husband. One day,
when she was coming from the store with a bottle of liquid yeast, she
suddenly came face to face with her betrothed, which gave her such a
fright that she dropped the bottle, spilling the yeast on her pretty
dress; and she ran home crying all the way. At thirteen she was
married, which had a good effect on her deportment. I hear no more of
her running away from her husband.

Among the interesting things belonging to my grandmother, besides her
dowry, at the time of the marriage, was her family. Her father was so
original that he kept a tutor for his daughters--sons he had none--and
allowed them to be instructed in the rudiments of three or four
languages and the elements of arithmetic. Even more unconventional was
her sister Hode. She had married a fiddler, who travelled constantly,
playing at hotels and inns, all through "far Russia." Having no
children, she ought to have spent her days in fasting and praying and
lamenting. Instead of this, she accompanied her husband on his
travels, and even had a heart to