ed for, or accepted, charity,
and the child was sent to the market.

A few minutes later, when the child had come back with an egg,
Seinwill's wife had the glistening Sabbath cakes on a shovel, and was
placing them gaily in the oven; my book was finished, and the
unfortunate hen, released at last from her prison, the sieve, ceased to
cackle and to ruffle out her plumage.

SHOLOM-ALECHEM

Pen name of Shalom Rabinovitz; born, 1859, in Pereyaslav, Government of
Poltava, Little Russia; Government Rabbi, at twenty-one, in Lubni, near
his native place; has spent the greater part of his life in Kieff; in
Odessa from 1890 to 1893, and in America from 1905 to 1907; Hebrew,
Russian, and Yiddish poet, novelist, humorous short story writer,
critic, and playwright; prolific contributor to Hebrew and Yiddish
periodicals; founder of Die juedische Volksbibliothek; novels: Stempenyu,
Yosele Solovei, etc.; collected works: first series, Alle Werk, 4 vols.,
Cracow, 1903-1904; second series, Neueste Werk, 8 vols., Warsaw,
1909-1911.

THE CLOCK

The clock struck thirteen!

Don't imagine I am joking, I am telling you in all seriousness what
happened in Mazepevke, in our house, and I myself was there at the time.

We had a clock, a large clock, fastened to the wall, an old, old clock
inherited from my grandfather, which had been left him by my
great-grandfather, and so forth. Too bad, that a clock should not be
alive and able to tell us something beside the time of day! What stories
we might have heard as we sat with it in the room! Our clock was famous
throughout the town as the best clock going--"Reb Simcheh's clock"--and
people used to come and set their watches by it, because it kept more
accurate time than any other. You may believe me that even Reb Lebish,
the sage, a philosopher, who understood the time of sunset from the sun
itself, and knew the calendar by rote, he said himself--I heard
him--that our clock was--well, as compared with his watch, it wasn't
worth a pinch of snuff, but as there _were_ such things as clocks, our
clock _was_ a clock. And if Reb Lebish himself said so, you may depend
upon it he was right, because every Wednesday, between Afternoon and
Evening Prayer, Reb Lebish climbed busily onto the roof of the women's
Shool, or onto the top of the hill beside the old house-of-study, and
looked out for the minute when the sun should set, in one hand his
watch, and in the other the calendar. And wh