dles, the couple pass to the canopy where
the rabbi waits, she has already forgotten; and when the crunching of
a glass under the bridegroom's heel announces that they are one, and
that until the broken pieces be reunited he is hers and hers alone,
she joins with all the company in the exulting shout of "Mozzel tov!"
("Good luck!"). Then the _dupka_, men and women joining in, forgetting
all but the moment, hands on hips, stepping in time, forward,
backward, and across. And then the feast.

They sit at the long tables by squads and tribes. Those who belong
together sit together. There is no attempt at pairing off for
conversation or mutual entertainment, at speech-making or toasting.
The business in hand is to eat, and it is attended to. The bridegroom,
at the head of the table, with his shiny silk hat on, sets the
example; and the guests emulate it with zeal, the men smoking big,
strong cigars between mouthfuls. "Gosh! ain't it fine?" is the
grateful comment of one curly-headed youngster, bravely attacking his
third plate of chicken-stew. "Fine as silk," nods his neighbor in
knickerbockers. Christmas, for once, means something to them that they
can understand. The crowd of hurrying waiters make room for one
bearing aloft a small turkey adorned with much tinsel and many paper
flowers. It is for the bride, the one thing not to be touched until
the next day--one day off from the drudgery of housekeeping; she, too,
can keep Christmas.

A group of bearded, dark-browed men sit apart, the rabbi among them.
They are the orthodox, who cannot break bread with the rest, for fear,
though the food be kosher, the plates have been defiled. They brought
their own to the feast, and sit at their own table, stern and
justified. Did they but know what depravity is harbored in the impish
mind of the girl yonder, who plans to hang her stocking overnight by
the window! There is no fireplace in the tenement. Queer things happen
over here, in the strife between the old and the new. The girls of the
College Settlement, last summer, felt compelled to explain that the
holiday in the country which they offered some of these children was
to be spent in an Episcopal clergyman's house, where they had prayers
every morning. "Oh," was the mother's indulgent answer, "they know it
isn't true, so it won't hurt them."

The bell of a neighboring church tower strikes the vesper hour. A man
in working-clothes uncovers his head reverently, and passes on.
Th