ng with it. People praised God, carried
the pitcher to the well, filled it, and poured a quart of water into the
pottage. The newcomer was one of God's creatures, and was assured of his
portion along with the others.

And if a Jew had a marriageable daughter, and could not afford a dowry,
he took a stick in his hand, donned a white shirt with a broad mangled
collar, repeated the "Prayer of the Highway," and set off on foot to
Volhynia, that thrice-blessed wonderland, where people talk with a
"Chirik," and eat Challeh with saffron even in the middle of the
week--with saffron, if not with honey.

There, in Volhynia, on Friday evenings, the rich Jewish householder of
the district walks to and fro leisurely in his brightly lit room. In all
likelihood, he is a short, plump, hairy man, with a broad, fair beard, a
gathered silk sash round his substantial figure, a cheery singsong
"Sholom-Alechem" on his mincing, "chiriky" tongue, and a merry crack of
the thumb. The Lithuanian guest, teacher or preacher, the shrunk and
shrivelled stranger with the piercing black eyes, sits in a corner,
merely moving his lips and gazing at the floor--perhaps because he feels
ill at ease in the bright, nicely-furnished room; perhaps because he is
thinking of his distant home, of his wife and children and his
marriageable daughter; and perhaps because it has suddenly all become
oddly dear to him, his poor, forsaken native place, with its moiling,
poverty-struck Jews, whose week is spent pitch-burning in the forest;
with its old, warm houses-of-study; with its celebrated giants of the
Torah, bending with a candle in their hand over the great hoary
Gemorehs.

And here, at table, between the tasty stuffed fish and the soup, with
the rich Volhynian "stuffed monkeys," the brusque, tongue-tied guest is
suddenly unable to contain himself, and overflows with talk about his
corner in Lithuania.

"Whether we have our Rabbis at home?! N-nu!!"

And thereupon he holds forth grandiloquently, with an ardor and
incisiveness born of the love and the longing at his heart. The piercing
black eyes shoot sparks, as the guest tells of the great men of
Mouravanke, with their fiery intellects, their iron perseverance, who
sit over their books by day and by night. From time to time they take an
hour and a half's doze, falling with their head onto their fists, their
beards sweeping the Gemoreh, the big candle keeping watch overhead and
waking them once more to the st