was! Could I expect such a
misfortune? What is he now?"

Meir continued to smooth the dishevelled hair of the pale child with
his hand. The tall, thin Schmul bent again and kissed his hand.

"Morejne," said he, "you are very good if you pity such a stupid
child."

"Schmul, why do you call me Morejne?" asked Meir.

Schmul interrupted him hastily.

"The fathers of your father were Morejnes; your zeide and your uncles
are Morejnes, and you, Meir, you will soon be Morejne also."

Meir shook his head with a peculiar smile.

"I shall never be a Morejne!" said he. "They will not confer such an
honour upon me, and I--don't wish for it!"

Schmul thought for a while, and then said:

"I heard that you have quarrelled with the great Rabbi and the
members of the kahal."

Meir, without answering, looked at the horrible proofs of deep
destitution around him.

"How poor you are," said he, not answering Schmul directly.

These words touched the very sensitive string of Schmul's life. His
hands trembled, and his eyes glared.

"Aj, how poor we are," he moaned; "but the poorest of all living on
this street is the hajet (tailor) Schmul. He must support an old,
blind mother, and wife, and eight children. And how can I support
them? I have no means except these two hands, which sew day and night
if there is something to sew."

Speaking thus, he stretched toward Meir his two hands--true beggar's
hands, dark, dirty, pricked with the needle, covered with scars made
by scissors, and now trembling from grief.

"Morejne," he said more softly, bending toward the listener, "our
life is hard--very hard. Everything is very expensive for us, and we
have so much to pay. The Czar's officers take taxes, we must pay more
for our kosher meat, and for the candles for Sabbath, we must pay to
the funeral society, pay to the officers of the kahal, and for what
do we not pay? Aj, vaj! From these poor houses flow rivers of
money--and where does it come from? From the sweat of our brows, from
our blood and the entrails of our children who grow thin from hunger!
Not a long time ago you asked me, Morejne, why my room was dirty. And
how can we help it when eleven of us must live in one room, and in
the passages there are two goats, which nourish us with their milk.
Morejne, you asked me why my wife is so thin and old, although she
has not yet lived many years, and why my children are always sick!
Morejne, kosher meat costs us so much that we never