"Anger is a sinful thing. It does as little good as any sin." And because I was greatly absorbed in the work, I did not notice how and by what miracle the Tabernacle came into being. "Come and see the Tabernacle we have built," I said to father, and dragged him out of the house by the tails of his coat. My father was delighted with our work. He looked at Moshe with a smile, and said, pointing to me: "Had you at any rate a little help from him?" "It was a help, for once," replied Moshe, looking up at the roof of the Tabernacle with anxious eyes. "If only our Hershke brings us the fir-boughs, it will be a Tabernacle for once." Hershke Mamtzes worried us about the fir-boughs. He put off going for them from day to day. The day before the Festival he went off and brought back a cart-load of thin sticks, a sort of weeds, such as grow on the banks of the river. And we began to cover the Tabernacle. That is to say, Moshe did the work, and I helped him by driving off the goats which had gathered around the fir-boughs, as if they were something worth while. I do not know what taste they found in the bitter green stalks. Because the house stood alone, in the middle of the street, there was no getting rid of the goats. If you drove one off another came up. The second was only just got rid of, when the first sprang up again. I drove them off with sticks. "Get out of this. Are you here again, foolish goats? Get off." The devil knows how they found out we had green fir-boughs. It seems they told one another, because there gathered around us all the goats of the town. And I, all alone, had to do battle with them. The Lord helped us, and we had all the fir-boughs on the roof. The goats remained standing around us like fools. They looked up with foolish eyes, and stupidly chewed the cud. I had my revenge of them, and I said to them: "Why don't you take the fir-boughs now, foolish goats?" They must have understood me, for they began to go off, one by one, in search of something to eat. And we began to decorate the Tabernacle from the inside. First of all, we strewed the floor with sand; then we hung on the walls all the wadded quilts belonging to the neighbours. Where there was no wadded quilt, there hung a shawl, and where there was no shawl, there was a sheet or a table-cloth. Then we brought out all the chairs and tables, the candle-sticks and candles, the plates and knives and forks and spoons. And each of the three women of the house made the blessing over her own candles for the Feast of Tabernacles. * * *