Yudith wraps the coverlets closer and closer round him, and presses him
to her side.

And the night wears on.

"O my sides!" groans Breklin.

"Mine, too!" moans Yudith, and they start another conversation.

One time they discuss their neighbors; another time the Breklins try to
calculate how long it is since they married, how much they spend a week
on an average, and what was the cost of Yudith's confinement.

It is seldom they calculate anything right, but talking helps to while
away time, till the basement begins to lighten, whereupon the Breklins
jump out of bed, as though it were some perilous hiding-place, and set
to work in a great hurry to kindle the stove.

ABRAHAM RAISIN

Born, 1876, in Kaidanov, Government of Minsk (Lithuania), White Russia;
traditional Jewish education; self-taught in Russian language; teacher
at fifteen, first in Kaidanov, then in Minsk; first poem published in
Perez's Juedische Bibliothek, in 1891; served in the army, in Kovno, for
four years; went to Warsaw in 1900, and to New York in 1911; Yiddish
lyric poet and novelist; occasionally writes Hebrew; contributor to
Spektor's Hausfreund, New York Abendpost, and New York Arbeiterzeitung;
co-editor of Das zwanzigste Jahrhundert; in 1903, published and edited,
in Cracow, Das juedische Wort, first to urge the claim of Yiddish as the
national Jewish language; publisher and editor, since 1911, of Dos neie
Land, in New York; collected works (poems and tales), 4 vols., Warsaw,
1908-1912.

SHUT IN

Lebele is a little boy ten years old, with pale cheeks, liquid, dreamy
eyes, and black hair that falls in twisted ringlets, but, of course, the
ringlets are only seen when his hat falls off, for Lebele is a pious
little boy, who never uncovers his head.

There are things that Lebele loves and never has, or else he has them
only in part, and that is why his eyes are always dreamy and troubled,
and always full of longing.

He loves the summer, and sits the whole day in Cheder. He loves the sun,
and the Rebbe hangs his caftan across the window, and the Cheder is
darkened, so that it oppresses the soul. Lebele loves the moon, the
night, but at home they close the shutters, and Lebele, on his little
bed, feels as if he were buried alive. And Lebele cannot understand
people's behaving so oddly.

It seems to him that when the sun shines in at the window, it is a
delight, it is so pleasant and cheerful, and the Rebbe goes and curta