"Yes, you'll drive me mad," said Hannah savagely. "Let me be! I'm too old now to get a _Chosan_, so let me be as I am. I can always earn my own living." "Thou seest, Shemuel?" said Simcha. "Thou seest my sorrows? Thou seest how impious our children wax in this godless country." "Let her be, Simcha, let her be," said the Reb. "She is young yet. If she hasn't any inclination thereto--!" "And what is _her_ inclination? A pretty thing, forsooth! Is she going to make her mother a laughing-stock! Are Mrs. Jewell and Mrs. Abrahams to dandle grandchildren in my face, to gouge out my eyes with them! It isn't that she can't get young men. Only she is so high-blown. One would think she had a father who earned five hundred a year, instead of a man who scrambles half his salary among dirty _Schnorrers_." "Talk not like an _Epicurean_," said the Reb. "What are we all but _Schnorrers_, dependent on the charity of the Holy One, blessed be He? What! Have we made ourselves? Rather fall prostrate and thank Him that His bounties to us are so great that they include the privilege of giving charity to others." "But we work for our living!" said the Rebbitzin. "I wear my knees away scrubbing." External evidence pointed rather to the defrication of the nose. "But, mother," said Hannah. "You know we have a servant to do the rough work." "Yes, servants!" said the Rebbitzin, contemptuously. "If you don't stand over them as the Egyptian taskmasters over our forefathers, they don't do a stroke of work except breaking the crockery. I'd much rather sweep a room myself than see a _Shiksah_ pottering about for an hour and end by leaving all the dust on the window-ledges and the corners of the mantelpiece. As for beds, I don't believe _Shiksahs_ ever shake them! If I had my way I'd wring all their necks." "What's the use of always complaining?" said Hannah, impatiently. "You know we must keep a _Shiksah_ to attend to the _Shabbos_ fire. The women or the little boys you pick up in the street are so unsatisfactory. When you call in a little barefoot street Arab and ask him to poke the fire, he looks at you as if you must be an imbecile not to be able to do it yourself. And then you can't always get hold of one." The Sabbath fire was one of the great difficulties of the Ghetto. The Rabbis had modified the Biblical prohibition against having any fire whatever, and allowed it to be kindled by non-Jews. Poor women, frequently Irish, and known as _Shabbos-goyahs_ or _fire-goyahs_, acted as stokers to the Ghetto at twopence a hearth. No Jew ever touched a match or a candle or burnt a piece of paper, or even opened a letter. The _Goyah_, which is literally heathen female, did everything required on the Sabbath. His grandmother once called Solomon Ansell a Sabbath-female merely for fingering the shovel when there was nothing in the grate.