own the little
fiddle, and slapping me on the shoulder.

I felt as if I had fallen down from the seventh heaven on to the earth.

From that day I visited Tchitchick regularly every Sabbath afternoon, to
hear him playing the fiddle. I went straight to the house. I was afraid
of no one; and I even became such good friends with the black dog that,
when he saw me, he wagged his tail, and wanted to fall upon me to lick
my hands. I would not let him do this. "Let us rather be good friends
from the distance."

At home not even a bird knew where I spent the Sabbath afternoons. I was
a bridegroom-elect, after all. And no one would have known of my visits
to Tchitchick to this day, if a new misfortune had not befallen me--a
great misfortune, of which I will now tell you.

* * *

Surely it is no one's affair if a Jewish young man goes for a walk on
the Sabbath afternoon a little beyond the town? Have people really got
nothing better to do than to think of others and look after them to see
where they are going? But of what use are such questions as these? It
lies in our nature, in the Jewish nature, I mean, to look well after
every one else, to criticize others and advise them. For example, a Jew
will go over to his neighbour, at prayers, and straighten out the
"Frontispiece" of his phylacteries. Or he will stop his neighbour, who
is running with the greatest haste and excitement, to tell him that the
leg of his trouser is turned up. Or he will point his finger at his
neighbour, so that the other shall not know what is amiss with him,
whether it is his nose, or his beard, or what the deuce is wrong with
him. Or a Jew will take a thing out of his neighbour's hand, when the
other is struggling to open it, and will say to him: "You don't know
how. Let me." Or should he see his neighbour building a house, he will
come over to look for a fault in it. He says he believes the ceiling is
too high, the rooms are too small, or the windows are awkwardly large.
And there seems nothing else left the builder to do but scatter the
house to pieces, and start it all over again.... We Jews have been
distinguished by this habit of interfering from time immemorial--from
the very first day on which the world was created. And you and I between
us will never alter the world full of Jews. It is not our duty to even
attempt it....

After this long introduction, it will be easy for you to understand how
Ephraim Log-of-wood--a Jew who was a black stra