g in his house, brought Antosh a glass of brandy:

"Drink, and drive home, in the name of God!"

Antosh drank the brandy with a quick gulp, bit off a piece of cake, and
declared joyfully, "I shall never forget it!"

"Not at all a bad Gentile," remarked someone in the crowd.

"Well, what would you have? Did you expect him to beat you?" queried
another, smiling.

The words "to beat" made a melancholy impression on the crowd, and it
dispersed in silence.

THE KADDISH

From behind the curtain came low moans, and low words of encouragement
from the old and experienced Bobbe. In the room it was dismal to
suffocation. The seven children, all girls, between twenty-three and
four years old, sat quietly, each by herself, with drooping head, and
waited for something dreadful.

At a little table near a great cupboard with books sat the "patriarch"
Reb Selig Chanes, a tall, thin Jew, with a yellow, consumptive face. He
was chanting in low, broken tones out of a big Gemoreh, and continually
raising his head, giving a nervous glance at the curtain, and then,
without inquiring what might be going on beyond the low moaning, taking
up once again his sad, tremulous chant. He seemed to be suffering more
than the woman in childbirth herself.

"Lord of the World!"--it was the eldest daughter who broke the
stillness--"Let it be a boy for once! Help, Lord of the World, have
pity!"

"Oi, thus might it be, Lord of the World!" chimed in the second.

And all the girls, little and big, with broken heart and prostrate
spirit, prayed that there might be born a boy.

Reb Selig raised his eyes from the Gemoreh, glanced at the curtain, then
at the seven girls, gave vent to a deep-drawn Oi, made a gesture with
his hand, and said with settled despair, "She will give you another
sister!"

The seven girls looked at one another in desperation; their father's
conclusion quite crushed them, and they had no longer even the courage
to pray.

Only the littlest, the four-year-old, in the torn frock, prayed softly:

"Oi, please God, there will be a little brother."

"I shall die without a Kaddish!" groaned Reb Selig.

The time drags on, the moans behind the curtain grow louder, and Reb
Selig and the elder girls feel that soon, very soon, the "grandmother"
will call out in despair, "A little girl!" And Reb Selig feels that the
words will strike home to his heart like a blow, and he resolves to run
away.

He goes out into the yard, and