do the people not come to you or me with
their broken locks, or broken clocks, or for advice how to get rid of
foxes, or blackbeetles and bugs and other filthy things? All the people
in the world are not the same. And it appears that talent is rare.

* * *

We became very near neighbours with this Moshe-for-once. We lived in the
same house with him, under the one roof. I say became, because, before
that, we lived in our own house. The wheels of fortune suddenly turned
round for us. Times grew bad. We did not wish to be a burden to any one.
We sold our house, paid our debts, and moved into Hershke Mamtzes'
house. It was an old ruin, without a garden, without a yard, without a
paling, without a body, and without life.

"Well, it's a hut," said my mother, pretending to be merry. But I saw
tears in her eyes.

"Do not sin," said my father, who was black as the earth. "Thank God for
this."

Why for "this," I do not know. Perhaps because we were not living on the
street? I would rather have lived on the street than in this house, with
strange boys and girls whom I did not know, nor wish to know, with their
yellow hair, and their running noses, with their thin legs and fat
bellies. When they walked they waddled like ducks. They did nothing but
eat, and when any one else was eating, they stared right into his mouth.

I was very angry with the Lord for having taken our house from us. I was
not sorry for the house as for the Tabernacle we had there. It stood
from year to year. It had a roof that could be raised and lowered, and a
beautiful carved ceiling of green and yellow boards, made into squares
with a "Shield of David" in the middle. True, kind friends told us to
hope on, for we should one day buy the house back, or the Lord would
help us to build another, and a better, and a bigger and a handsomer
house than the one we had had to sell. But all this was cold comfort to
us. I heard the same sort of words when I broke my tin watch,
accidentally, of course, into fragments. My mother smacked me, and my
father wiped my eyes, and promised to buy me a better, and bigger and
handsomer watch than the one I broke. But the more my father praised the
watch he was going to buy for me, the more I cried for the other, the
old watch. When my father was not looking, my mother wept silently for
the old house. And my father sighed and groaned. A black cloud settled
on his face, and his big white forehead was covered with wrinkles.

I th