We paid four bits to see you. Our Lady of Jokes, and in this cold, sunless street we grin, we smirk, we leer a salutation to your photograph and the phrase beneath it that laughs mockingly back at us--Oh, Dancing Venus! MISHKIN'S MINYON We were discussing vacations and Sammy, who is eleven years old going on twelve, listened nervously to his father. Finally Sammy spoke up: "I won't go," he bristled. "No, I won't if I gotta tell the conductor I'm under five. I ain't going." Sammy's father coughed with some embarrassment. "Sha!" said Feodor Mishkin, removing his attention from the bowl of fruit, "I see it takes more than naturalization papers to change a _landsmann_ from Kremetchuk." And he fastened a humorous eye upon Sammy's father. "It's like this," continued the Falstaffian one from Roosevelt Road: "In Russia where my friend here, Hershela comes from, that is in Russia of the good old days where there were pogroms and ghettos and _provocateurs_--ah, I grow homesick for that old Russia sometimes--the Jews were not always so honest as they might be. Don't interrupt me, Hershela. My friend here I want to tell a story to is a journalist and he will understand I am no 'antishemite' if I explain how it is that you want your son Sammy to tell the conductor he is under five." * * * * * Turning to me Mishkin grinned and proceeded. "The Jews, as you know, are great travelers," he said. "They have traveled more than all the other peoples put together. And yet, they don't like to pay car fare, in Russia, particular. I can remember my father, who was a good rabbi and a holy man. Yes, but when it came time to ride on the train from one city to another he would fold up his long beard and crawl under the seat. "It was only on such an occasion that my father would talk to a woman. He would actually rather cut off his right hand than talk to a woman in public that he didn't know. This was because Rabbi Mishkin, my father, was a holy man. But he was not above asking a woman to spread out her skirts so that the inspector coming through the train couldn't see him under the seat. "Of course, you had to pay the conductors. But a ruble was enough, not ten or twenty rubles like the fare called for. And the conductors were always glad to have Jews ride on their train because it meant a private revenue for them. I remember that the conductors on the line running through Kremetchuk had learned a few words of Yiddish. For instance, when the train would stop at a station the conductor would walk up and down the platform and cry out a few times--_mu kennt_. This meant that the inspector wasn't on the train and you could jump on and hide under the seats. Or if the inspector was on the train the conductor would walk up and down and yell a few times, _Malchamovis_! This is a Hebrew word that means Evil Angel and it was the signal for nothing doing.