Hanneh Breineh was invited
to share the rickety bed with Mrs. Pelz.

The mattress was full of lumps and hollows. Hanneh Breineh lay cramped
and miserable, unable to stretch out her limbs. For years she had been
accustomed to hair mattresses and ample woolen blankets, so that though
she covered herself with her fur coat, she was too cold to sleep. But
worse than the cold were the creeping things on the wall. And as the
lights were turned low, the mice came through the broken plaster and
raced across the floor. The foul odors of the kitchen-sink added to the
night of horrors.

"Are you going back home?" asked Mrs. Pelz as Hanneh Breineh put on her
hat and coat the next morning.

"I don't know where I'm going," she replied as she put a bill into Mrs.
Pelz's hand.

For hours Hanneh Breineh walked through the crowded Ghetto streets. She
realized that she no longer could endure the sordid ugliness of her
past, and yet she could not go home to her children. She only felt that
she must go on and on.

In the afternoon a cold, drizzling rain set in. She was worn out from
the sleepless night and hours of tramping. With a piercing pain in her
heart she at last turned back and boarded the subway for Riverside
Drive. She had fled from the marble sepulcher of the Riverside apartment
to her old home in the Ghetto; but now she knew that she could not live
there again. She had outgrown her past by the habits of years of
physical comforts, and these material comforts that she could no longer
do without choked and crushed the life within her.

A cold shudder went through Hanneh Breineh as she approached the
apartment-house. Peering through the plate glass of the door she saw the
face of the uniformed hall-man. For a hesitating moment she remained
standing in the drizzling rain, unable to enter and yet knowing full
well that she would have to enter.

Then suddenly Hanneh Breineh began to laugh. She realized that it was
the first time she had laughed since her children had become rich. But
it was the hard laugh of bitter sorrow. Tears streamed down her furrowed
cheeks as she walked slowly up the granite steps.

"The fat of the land!" muttered Hanneh Breineh, with a choking sob as
the hall-man with immobile face deferentially swung open the door--"the
fat of the land!"

THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

NOVEMBER, 1918, TO SEPTEMBER, 1919

ADDRESSES OF AMERICAN MAGAZINES PUBLISHING SHORT STORIES

NOTE. _This ad