Our literature is full of the idea of Man, the Protector--a proposition which crumbles before the slightest criticism. The protective element in life is overwhelmingly feminine. No one of us would have survived the grim dangers of childhood except for mothering. Adult men--even though unconscious of it--are pretty generally dependent on their womenfolk. A function unused surely turns into an ache. Because Yetta felt no one dependent on her, life seemed barren and painful. The outer wrapper of herself--the hands with which she banged out copy on her typewriter, the feet which carried her about, the eyes and ears with which she watched and listened to the conflict of labor, the tongue with which she argued and pleaded for money, the brain with which she pondered and planned--all were busy. But this hurrying activity did not touch the subtle inner substance of herself. For this there was only the barren, empty ache. Coming downtown one night from a union meeting in the Bronx, Yetta's eye caught a paragraph in the paper which told that David Goldstein, proprietor of the Sioux Hotel, who had been shot two days before in a gang fight, had died in the City Hospital. It was the first Yetta had heard of her relatives since she had left them. She stayed on the car until she had reached the centre of the Ghetto. A policeman, who was standing outside the Sioux Hotel, went inside for her and found her aunt's address. It was not far off, and in a few minutes Yetta found herself in the dismalest of three-room flats. Half a dozen dumb, miserable old women sat in the kitchen. It was with some difficulty that Yetta made out which was Mrs. Goldstein. "Aunt Martha, don't you remember me?" she asked in Yiddish. But Mrs. Goldstein was too dazed to reply. From the other women, Yetta learned that her aunt was entirely alone and penniless. The son had not been seen for several years. Rosa had disappeared. As soon as might be Yetta drove out the Kovna _lands leit_, and when they were gone, she knelt down beside the old woman. "Don't you understand, Auntie Martha? It's little Yetta come back to take care of you. You won't ever have to worry any more. I'll take care of you." Tears came suddenly to the old woman, the first in a long, long time, and Yetta got her to bed. Two decidedly noisy young men lodged in the front room. Yetta was rather frightened; it took her a long time to fall asleep in the stuffy bedroom beside her aunt. It was easy to reconstruct the process by which the Goldstein family had disintegrated. Isaac was in prison. Rosa had probably gone off to live by herself--tired of bringing home wages for her father to guzzle. She would be living alone in some dismal furnished room. She had been too poorly endowed by Nature to "go wrong."