il was covered with ice like a hill of
glass! Or when the great rains were pouring down, and the town and
especially the clay hill are confounded with the deep, thick mud!

Our Bertzi Wasserfuehrer was more alive to the fascinations of this
Parnosseh than any other water-carrier. He was, as though in his own
despite, a pious Jew and a great man of his word, and he had to carry
water for almost all the well-to-do householders. True, that in face of
all his good luck he was one of the poorest Jews in the Poor People's
Street, only----

V

Lord of the World, may there never again be such a winter as there was
then!

Not the oldest man there could recall one like it. The snow came down in
drifts, and never stopped. One could and might have sworn on a scroll of
the Law, that the great Jewish God was angry with the Kamenivke Jews,
and had commanded His angels to shovel down on Kamenivke all the snow
that had lain by in all the seven heavens since the sixth day of
creation, so that the sinful town might be a ruin and a desolation.

And the terrible, fiery frosts!

Frozen people were brought into the town nearly every day.

Oi, Jews, how Bertzi Wasserfuehrer struggled, what a time he had of it!
Enemies of Zion, it was nearly the death of him!

And suddenly the snow began to stop falling, all at once, and then
things were worse than ever--there was a sea of water, an ocean of mud.

And Passover coming on with great strides!

For three days before Passover he had not come home to sleep. Who talks
of eating, drinking, and sleeping? He and his man toiled day and night,
like six horses, like ten oxen.

The last day before Passover was the worst of all. His horse suddenly
came to the conclusion that sooner than live such a life, it would die.
So it died and vanished somewhere in the depths of the Kamenivke clay.

And Bertzi the water-carrier and his man had to drag the cart with the
great water-barrel themselves, the whole day till long after dark.

VI

It is already eleven, twelve, half past twelve at night, and Bertzi's
chest, throat, and nostrils continue to pipe and to whistle, to sob and
to sigh.

The room is colder and darker, the small fire in the oven went out long
ago, and only little stumps of candles remain.

Rochtzi walks and runs about the room, she weeps and wrings her hands.

But now she runs up to the couch by the table, and begins to rouse her
husband with screams and cries fit to make one's