nted by the awful fate that had befallen her
father, she followed Mendel into the thickest of the danger and like a
ministering angel brought comfort and relief. Their example was
contagious. Young and old, male and female, vied with one another in
doing good and in mitigating suffering. The superstitious dread with
which they had formerly regarded the disease had disappeared and with it
much of the danger which fear or an over-wrought imagination causes. A
large building was secured and fitted up as a hospital. Thither the sick
were conveyed and there kept in strict quarantine. It was not difficult
to find nurses among those who had already had the disease, when told
that they need not fear its recurrence.

Many of the miserable dwellings of the poor were demolished and the
ground cleansed and fumigated, their former inhabitants in the meanwhile
finding ample accommodations in the synagogues or in the houses of the
wealthy. There was not a family of well-to-do Jews that did not harbor a
number of those who were thus summarily deprived of shelter. Every well
which might have become contaminated was filled up with earth and stone,
and strict injunctions were issued to use no water that had not been
thoroughly boiled. The schools were temporarily closed to avoid the
danger of infection, exercise in the fields was recommended, and so well
were all these regulations observed that at the end of six weeks the
Jewish quarter was practically free from the disease, while the grim
monster still raged among the families of the less prudent gentiles.
Then the work of reconstructing what had been demolished was taken up.
Thanks to the offerings of Hirsch Bensef and his friends, money was not
lacking and willing hands were found to supply the necessary manual
labor. Where wretched huts and unpainted hovels had offended the eye,
unpretentious but clean and comfortable dwellings now were seen. The
lower portion of the town had been entirely remodelled and vied in point
of neatness with the more aristocratic quarter. As home after home was
completed, the former inmates took possession and great was the
rejoicing. It was impossible, however, to do away with all the poor
hovels that abounded in the Jewish quarter: such an undertaking would
have required a vast amount of money and years of labor. It was only
where the need was most pressing that the work of regeneration was
carried on.

The sad fact soon forced itself on Mendel that the p