gifts. 'Again
will he declare that he has been accorded a good writing and a good
sealing by the Heavenly Tribunal!'

'Well, hasn't he?' laughed Schneemann.

'Perhaps he has,' said Rozenoffski musingly. '_Qui sa?_'

THE TUG OF LOVE

THE TUG OF LOVE

When Elias Goldenberg, Belcovitch's head cutter, betrothed himself to
Fanny Fersht, the prettiest of the machinists, the Ghetto blessed the
match, always excepting Sugarman the _Shadchan_ (whom love matches
shocked), and Goldenberg's relatives (who considered Fanny flighty and
fond of finery).

'That Fanny of yours was cut out for a rich man's wife,' insisted
Goldenberg's aunt, shaking her pious wig.

'He who marries Fanny _is_ rich,' retorted Elias.

'"Pawn your hide, but get a bride,"' quoted the old lady savagely.

As for the slighted marriage-broker, he remonstrated almost like a
relative.

'But I didn't want a negotiated marriage,' Elias protested.

'A love marriage I could also have arranged for you,' replied Sugarman
indignantly.

But Elias was quite content with his own arrangement, for Fanny's
glance was melting and her touch transporting. To deck that soft warm
hand with an engagement-ring, a month's wages had not seemed
disproportionate, and Fanny flashed the diamond bewitchingly. It lit
up the gloomy workshop with its signal of felicity. Even Belcovitch,
bent over his press-iron, sometimes omitted to rebuke Fanny's
badinage.

The course of true love seemed to run straight to the Canopy--Fanny
had already worked the bridegroom's praying shawl--when suddenly a
storm broke. At first the cloud was no bigger than a man's hand--in
fact, it was a man's hand. Elias espied it groping for Fanny's in the
dim space between the two machines. As Fanny's fingers fluttered
towards it, her other hand still guiding the cloth under the throbbing
needle, Elias felt the needle stabbing his heart up and down, through
and through. The very finger that held his costly ring lay in this
alien paw gratis.

The shameless minx! Ah, his relatives were right. He snapped the
scissors savagely like a dragon's jaw.

'Fanny, what dost thou?' he gasped in Yiddish.

Fanny's face flamed; her guilty fingers flew back.

'I thought thou wast on the other side,' she breathed.

Elias snorted incredulously.

As soon as Sugarman heard of the breaking of the engagement he flew to
Elias, his blue bandanna streaming from his coat-tail.

'If you had come to me,' he cro