the horizon just before
the old man broke down with emotion over "Thou art One," and took the
sky and the earth to witness that God is One and His Name is One, and
His people Israel one nation on the earth, to whom He gave the Sabbath
for a rest and an inheritance. The Rav wept and swallowed his tears, and
his eyes were closed. Sholem, on the other hand, could not take his eye
off the manuscript that stuck out of his father's girdle, and it was all
he could do not to snatch it and run away.

They said nothing on the way home in the dark, they might have been
coming from a funeral. But Sholem's heart beat fast, for he knew his
father would throw the manuscript into the fire, where it would be
burnt, and when they came to the door of their house, he stopped his
father, and said in a voice eloquent of tears:

"Give it me back, Tatishe, please give it me back!"

And the Rav gave it him back without looking him in the face, and said:

"Look here, only don't tell Mother! She is ill, she mustn't be upset.
She is ill, not of you be it spoken!"

MEYER BLINKIN

Born, 1879, in a village near Pereyaslav, Government of Poltava, Little
Russia, of Hasidic parentage; educated in Kieff, where he acquired the
trade of carpenter in order to win the right of residence; studied
medicine; began to write in 1906; came to New York in 1908; writer of
stories to the number of about fifty, which have been published in
various periodicals; wrote also Der Sod, and Dr. Makower.

WOMEN

A PROSE POEM

Hedged round with tall, thick woods, as though designedly, so that no
one should know what happens there, lies the long-drawn-out old town of
Pereyaslav.

To the right, connected with Pereyaslav by a wooden bridge, lies another
bit of country, named--Pidvorkes.

The town itself, with its long, narrow, muddy streets, with the crowded
houses propped up one against the other like tombstones, with their
meagre grey walls all to pieces, with the broken window-panes stuffed
with rags--well, the town of Pereyaslav was hardly to be distinguished
from any other town inhabited by Jews.

Here, too, people faded before they bloomed. Here, too, men lived on
miracles, were fruitful and multiplied out of all season and reason.
They talked of a livelihood, of good times, of riches and pleasures,
with the same appearance of firm conviction, and, at the same time the
utter disbelief, with which one tells a legend read in a book.

And they