t cholera, in order to
put an end to the plague, led him, aged thirty, out to the cemetery, and
there married him to Malkeh the orphan, she cast him off two weeks
later! She was still too young (twenty-eight), she said, to stay with
him and die of hunger. She went out into the world, together with a
large band of poor, after the great fire that destroyed nearly the whole
town, and nothing more was heard of Malkeh the orphan from that day
forward. And Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber betook himself, with needle and
flat-iron, into the women's chamber in the New Shool, the community
having assigned it to him as a workroom.

How came it about, you may ask, that so versatile a tailor as
Yitzchok-Yossel should be so poor?

Well, if you do, it just shows you didn't know him!

Wait and hear what I shall tell you.

The story is on this wise: Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber was a tailor who
could make anything, and who made nothing at all, that is, since he
displayed his imagination in cutting out and sewing on the occasion I am
referring to, nobody would trust him.

I can remember as if it were to-day what happened in Kabtzonivke, and
the commotion there was in the little town when Yitzchok-Yossel made Reb
Yecheskel the teacher a pair of trousers (begging your pardon!) of such
fantastic cut that the unfortunate teacher had to wear them as a vest,
though he was not then in need of one, having a brand new sheepskin not
more than three years old.

And now listen! Binyomin Droibnik the trader's mother died (blessed be
the righteous Judge!), and her whole fortune went, according to the Law,
to her only son Binyomin. She had to be buried at the expense of the
community. If she was to be buried at all, it was the only way. But the
whole town was furious with the old woman for having cheated them out of
their expectations and taken her whole fortune away with her to the real
world. None knew exactly _why_, but it was confidently believed that old
"Aunt" Leah had heaps of treasure somewhere in hiding.

It was a custom with us in Kabtzonivke to say, whenever anyone, man or
woman, lived long, ate sicknesses by the clock, and still did not die,
that it was a sign that he had in the course of his long life gathered
great store of riches, that somewhere in a cellar he kept potsful of
gold and silver.

The Funeral Society, the younger members, had long been whetting their
teeth for "Aunt" Leah's fortune, and now she had died (may she merit
Par