ts.

But he likes the days on which he fasts better.

First, they are pleasing to God, and it means a little bit more of the
world-to-come, the interest grows, and the capital grows with it.

"Secondly" (he thinks), "no money is wasted on me. Of course, I am
accountable to no one, and nobody ever questions me as to how I spend
it, but what do I want money for, when I can get along without it?

"And what is the good of feeling one's self a little higher than a
beast? A beast eats every day, but I can go without food for one or two
days. A man _should_ be above a beast!

"O, if a man could only raise himself to a level where he could live
without eating at all! But there are one's confounded insides!" So
thinks Chayyim Chaikin, for hunger has made a philosopher of him.

"The insides, the necessity of eating, these are the causes of the
world's evil! The insides and the necessity of eating have made a pauper
of me, and drive my children to toil in the sweat of their brow and risk
their lives for a bit of bread!

"Suppose a man had no need to eat! Ai--ai--ai! My children would all
stay at home! An end to toil, an end to moil, an end to 'shtreikeven,'
an end to the risking of life, an end to factory and factory owners, to
rich men and paupers, an end to jealousy and hatred and fighting and
shedding of blood! All gone and done with! Gone and done with! A
paradise! a paradise!"

So reasons Chayyim Chaikin, and, lost in speculation, he pities the
world, and is grieved to the heart to think that God should have made
man so little above the beast.

* * * * *

The day on which Chayyim Chaikin fasts is, as I told you, his best day,
and a _real_ fast day, like the Ninth of Ab, for instance--he is ashamed
to confess it--is a festival for him!

You see, it means not to eat, not to be a beast, not to be guilty of the
children's blood, to earn the reward of a Mitzveh, and to weep to
heart's content on the ruins of the Temple.

For how can one weep when one is full? How can a full man grieve? Only
he can grieve whose soul is faint within him! The good year knows how
some folk answer it to their conscience, giving in to their
insides--afraid of fasting! Buy them a groschen worth of oats, for
charity's sake!

Thus would Chayyim Chaikin scorn those who bought themselves off the
fast, and dropped a hard coin into the collecting box.

The Ninth of Ab is the hardest fast of all--so the world has