the room. Rochtzi weeps.
Bertzi is back on the couch and snores.

Different sounds, like the voices of winds, cattle, and wild beasts, and
the whirr of a mill, are heard in his snoring. And her weeping--it seems
as if the whole room were sighing and quivering and shaking....

EZRIELK THE SCRIBE

Forty days before Ezrielk descended upon this sinful world, his
life-partner was proclaimed in Heaven, and the Heavenly Council decided
that he was to transcribe the books of the Law, prayers, and Mezuzehs
for the Kabtzonivke Jews, and thereby make a living for his wife and
children. But the hard word went forth to him that he should not
disclose this secret decree to anyone, and should even forget it himself
for a goodly number of years. A glance at Ezrielk told one that he had
been well lectured with regard to some important matter, and was to tell
no tales out of school. Even Minde, the Kabtzonivke Bobbe, testified to
this:

"Never in all my life, all the time I've been bringing Jewish children
into God's world, have I known a child scream so loud at birth as
Ezrielk--a sign that he'd had it well rubbed into him!"

Either the angel who has been sent to fillip little children above the
lips when they are being born, was just then very sleepy (Ezrielk was
born late at night), or some one had put him out of temper, but one way
or another little Ezrielk, the very first minute of his Jewish
existence, caught such a blow that his top lip was all but split in two.

After this kindly welcome, when God's angel himself had thus received
Ezrielk, slaps, blows, and stripes rained down upon his head, body, and
life, all through his days, without pause or ending.

Ezrielk began to attend Cheder when he was exactly three years old. His
first teacher treated him very badly, beat him continually, and took all
the joy of his childhood from him. By the time this childhood of his had
passed, and he came to be married (he began to wear the phylacteries and
the prayer-scarf on the day of his marriage), he was a very poor
specimen, small, thin, stooping, and yellow as an egg-pudding, his
little face dark, dreary, and weazened, like a dried Lender herring. The
only large, full things about him were his earlocks, which covered his
whole face, and his two blue eyes. He had about as much strength as a
fly, he could not even break the wine-glass under the marriage canopy by
himself, and had to ask for help of Reb Yainkef Butz, the beadle