is mother's tears, the carpenter's hands, and at the citron
that lay on the table, yellow as wax, without a head, without a spark of
life, a dead thing, a corpse.

"A dead citron," said my father, in a broken voice.

"A dead citron," repeated my mother, the tears gushing from her eyes.

"A dead citron," echoed the carpenter, looking at his hands. He seemed
to be saying to himself: "There's a pair of hands for you! May they
wither!"

"A dead citron," said Leibel, in a joyful voice. But he caught himself
up, fearing his tones might proclaim that he, Leibel, was the murderer,
the slaughterer of the citron.

Isshur the Beadle

When I think of Isshur the beadle, I am reminded of Alexander the Great,
Napoleon Bonaparte, and other such giants of history.

Isshur was not a nobody. He led the whole congregation, the whole town
by the nose. He had the whole town in his hand. He was a man who served
everybody and commanded everybody; a man who was under everybody, but
feared nobody. He had a cross look, terrifying eyebrows, a beard of
brass, a powerful fist, and a long stick. Isshur was a name to conjure
with.

Who made Isshur what he was? Ask me an easier question. There are types
of whom it can be said they are cast, fixed. They never move out of
their place. As you see them the first time, so are they always. It
seems they always were as they are, and will ever remain the same. When
I was a child, I could not tear myself away from Isshur. I was always
puzzling out the one question--What was Isshur like before he was
Isshur? That is to say, before he got those terrifying eyebrows, and the
big hooked nose that was always filled with snuff, and the big brass
beard that started by being thick and heavy, and ended up in a few, long
straggling, terrifying hairs. How did he look when he was a child, ran
about barefoot, went to "_Cheder_," and was beaten by his teacher? And
what was Isshur like when his mother was carrying him about in her arms,
when she suckled him, wiped his nose for him, and said: "Isshur, my
sweet boy. My beautiful boy. May I suffer instead of your little bones?"

These were the questions that puzzled me when I was a child, and could
not tear myself away from Isshur.

"Go home, wretches. May the devil take your father and mother." And
Isshur would not even allow any one to think of him.

Surely, I was only one boy, yet Isshur called me wretches. You must know
that Isshur hated to have any one s