It is an old story in the Ghetto, one that lovers tell to their sweethearts, who always cry when they hear it. The machines still roar and whirr, as if a legion of wild spirits were shrieking within them, and many a tear is stitched into the garments, but you never see them, madame—no, gaze as intently upon your jacket as you will, the tear has left no stain. There is an old man at the corner machine, grey-haired and worn, but he works briskly. He is the first to arrive each morning, and the last to leave each night, and all his soul is in his work. His machine is an old one, and roars louder than the rest, but he does not hear it. Day and night, sleeping and waking, there are a hundred thousand machines roaring away in his brain. What cares he for one more or one less? THE SADER GUEST Rosnofsky was explaining to me his theory of the lost blue with which the ancient Hebrew priests dyed the talith, when the door opened and lanky Lazarus entered, hat in hand. He entered cautiously, keeping one hand on the doorknob, and one foot firmly planted for a backward spring. He seemed rather embarrassed to find a third person present, but the matter that he had on his mind was weighty—so weighty, in fact, that, after a moment’s hesitation, he plunged right into the heart of it. “Mr. Rosnofsky,” he said, “I love your daughter.” Rosnofsky’s eyes opened wide, and his mouth shut tight. “And she loves me,” Lazarus went on. Rosnofsky’s eyes contracted, until they gleamed through the tiniest kind of a slit between the lids. His hand fumbled behind his back among a number of tailor’s tools that lay on the table. “And I have come to ask your consent to our marriage.” Crash! Rosnofsky’s aim was bad. The shears, instead of reaching Lazarus, shattered the window pane. Lazarus was flying rapidly down the street. Then Rosnofsky turned to me. “And this mixture, as I was saying, will produce exactly the same blue that the Talmud describes.” It was worth while to become acquainted with Rosnofsky. When aroused, or crossed, or seriously annoyed, he had a frightful temper, and the man whose misfortune it had been to stir him up was the object of a malediction as bitter as it was fierce, extending through all his family for, usually, a dozen generations. Then, in startling contrast to this, he was a devout son of Abraham, and, in moments of serious reflection, would be almost overcome by a feeling of piety, and at such times all that was good and noble in his nature asserted itself. It was a strange blending of the prosaic with the patriarchal. “How came the original colour to be lost?” I asked. Rosnofsky looked at me for a moment. Then he shook his head. “That scamp has upset me completely,” he said. “Some other time I will tell you. Just now I can think of nothing but the effrontery of that scoundrel.” “What makes you so bitter toward him?” I ventured to ask.