trade in
apples--on tick of course--is very lively in the orchards. There is a
custom in the town to that effect, and Avrohom cannot do away with it.
Young gentlemen and young ladies come into the orchard, and hold a sort
of revel; they sing and laugh, they walk and they chatter, and Avrohom
must listen to it all, and bear it, and wait for the night, when he can
creep back into his hut, and need look at no one but the trees, and hear
nothing but the wind, and sometimes the rain and the thunder.

But it is worse in the autumn, when the fruit is getting over-ripe, and
he can no longer remain in the orchard. With a bursting heart he bids
farewell to the trees, to the hut in which he has spent so many quiet,
peaceful moments. He conveys the apples to a shed belonging to the farm,
which he has hired, ever since he had the orchard, for ten gulden a
month, and goes back to the Gass.

In the Gass, at that time, there is mud and rain. Town Jews drag
themselves along sick and disheartened. They cough and groan. Avrohom
stares round him, and fails to recognize the world.

"Bad!" he mutters. "Fe!" and he spits. "Where is one to get to?"

And Avrohom recalls the beautiful legends in the Tales of Jerusalem, he
recalls the land of Israel.

There he knows it is always summer, always warm and fine. And every
autumn the vision draws him.

But there is no possibility of his being able to go there--he must sell
the apples which he has brought from the orchard, and feed the wife and
the children he has "outside the land." And all through the autumn and
part of the winter, Avrohom drags himself about with a basket of apples
on his arm and a yearning in his heart. He waits for the dear summer,
when he will be able to go back and hide himself in the orchard, in the
hut, and be alone, where the town mud and the town Jews with dulled
senses shall be out of sight, and the week-day noise, out of hearing.

HIRSH DAVID NAUMBERG

Born, 1876, in Msczczonow, Government of Warsaw, Russian Poland, of
Hasidic parentage; traditional Jewish education in the house of his
grandfather; went to Warsaw in 1898; at present (1912) in America; first
literary work appeared in 1900; writer of stories, etc., in Hebrew and
Yiddish; co-editor of Ha-Zofeh, Der Freind, Ha-Boker; contributor to
Ha-Zeman, Heint, Ha-Dor, Ha-Shiloah, etc.; collected works, 5 vols.,
Warsaw, 1908-1911.

THE RAV AND THE RAV'S SON

The Sabbath midday meal is over, and