stopped begging for something to eat.

"But what are we to do?" asked the bewildered Shmuel.

"Do?" screamed Sarah. "Go home, this very minute!"

Shmuel promptly caught up a few children, and they left the park. Sarah
was quite quiet on the way home, merely remarking to her husband that
she would settle her account with him later.

"I'll pay you out," she said, "for my satin dress, for the hand-bag, for
the pineapple, for the bananas, for the milk, for the whole blessed
picnic, for the whole of my miserable existence."

"Scold away!" answered Shmuel. "It is you who were right. I don't know
what possessed me. A picnic, indeed! You may well ask what next? A poor
wretched workman like me has no business to think of anything beyond the
shop."

Sarah, when they reached home, was as good as her word. Shmuel would
have liked some supper, as he always liked it, even in slack times, but
there was no supper given him. He went to bed a hungry man, and all
through the night he repeated in his sleep:

"A picnic, oi, a picnic!"

MANASSEH

It was a stifling summer evening. I had just come home from work, taken
off my coat, unbuttoned my waistcoat, and sat down panting by the window
of my little room.

There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for my reply, in came
a woman with yellow hair, and very untidy in her dress.

I judged from her appearance that she had not come from a distance. She
had nothing on her head, her sleeves were tucked up, she held a ladle in
her hand, and she was chewing something or other.

"I am Manasseh's wife," said she.

"Manasseh Gricklin's?" I asked.

"Yes," said my visitor, "Gricklin's, Gricklin's."

I hastily slipped on a coat, and begged her to be seated.

Manasseh was an old friend of mine, he was a capmaker, and we worked
together in one shop.

And I knew that he lived somewhere in the same tenement as myself, but
it was the first time I had the honor of seeing his wife.

"Look here," began the woman, "don't you work in the same shop as my
husband?"

"Yes, yes," I said.

"Well, and now tell me," and the yellow-haired woman gave a bound like a
hyena, "how is it I see you come home from work with all other
respectable people, and my husband not? And it isn't the first time,
either, that he's gone, goodness knows where, and come home two hours
after everyone else. Where's he loitering about?"

"I don't know," I replied gravely.

The woman brandished her ladle