on the roof?"

"Wrong again!"

"To buy some more carbolic acid, and drive out the bugs?"

"Not a bad idea," observed Shmuel, "but that is not it, either."

"Well, then, whatever is it, for goodness' sake! The moon?" asked Sarah,
beginning to lose patience. "What have you been and thought of? Tell me
once for all, and have done with it!"

And Shmuel said:

"Sarah, you know, we belong to a lodge."

"Of course I do!" and Sarah gave him a look of mingled astonishment and
alarm. "It's not more than a week since you took a whole dollar there,
and I'm not likely to have forgotten what it cost you to make it up.
What is the matter now? Do they want another?"

"Try again!"

"Out with it!"

"I--want us, Sarah," stammered Shmuel,--"to go for a picnic."

"A picnic!" screamed Sarah. "Is that the only thing you have left to
wish for?"

"Look here, Sarah, we toil and moil the whole year through. It's nothing
but trouble and worry, trouble and worry. Call that living! When do we
ever have a bit of pleasure?"

"Well, what's to be done?" said his wife, in a subdued tone.

"The summer will soon be over, and we haven't set eyes on a green blade
of grass. We sit day and night sweating in the dark."

"True enough!" sighed his wife, and Shmuel spoke louder:

"Let us have an outing, Sarah. Let us enjoy ourselves for once, and give
the children a breath of fresh air, let us have a change, if it's only
for five minutes!"

"What will it cost?" asks Sarah, suddenly, and Shmuel has soon made the
necessary calculation.

"A family ticket is only thirty cents, for Yossele, Rivele, Hannahle,
and Berele; for Resele and Doletzke I haven't to pay any carfare at all.
For you and me, it will be ten cents there and ten back--that makes
fifty cents. Then I reckon thirty cents for refreshments to take with
us: a pineapple (a damaged one isn't more than five cents), a few
bananas, a piece of watermelon, a bottle of milk for the children, and a
few rolls--the whole thing shouldn't cost us more than eighty cents at
the outside."

"Eighty cents!" and Sarah clapped her hands together in dismay. "Why,
you can live on that two days, and it takes nearly a whole day's
earning. You can buy an old ice-box for eighty cents, you can buy a pair
of trousers--eighty cents!"

"Leave off talking nonsense!" said Shmuel, disconcerted. "Eighty cents
won't make us rich. We shall get on just the same whether we have them
or not. We must live like human bei