Yesterday Simon Eichelkatz promised to tell me all sorts of things during the fall and winter. I wonder whether I shouldn't wait a little while before I present my visiting cards. When once you begin, there are invitations and social obligations from which you cannot withdraw--and then there would be an end to the long talks with Simon. And I must carefully consider whether I am likely to laugh so heartily in the "aesthetic _salons_" of the fine Jewish houses as I did yesterday, when Simon told me the story of Teacher Sandberg. Scarcely! The young ladies would undoubtedly find the affair "shocking." But I want to record it here, and I will call it "The Adventure of Teacher Sandberg." It was on the hottest and longest of Jewish fast days, _Shivoh oser be-Tamuz_. The sun glared down pitilessly. Not a breath of air to freshen, to quicken the heavy atmosphere. The Khille began the "three weeks" with a full fast day, on which the faithful partook neither of meat nor drink. The male members of the congregation strictly observed the customs, although to be pious was especially hard on this day in midsummer, when daylight continues endlessly. The length of the fast has become a byword, and a very tall man is said "to be as long as Shivoh oser be-Tamuz." But neither heat nor length prevented the faithful from keeping the fast recalling the destruction of the sanctuary on Zion. And so the congregation made itself penitential; it fasted, prayed, perspired, groaned, and denied itself every refreshment. The people crawled into the shadow of the houses to escape the heat and the tormenting thirst it caused. In vain! The awful sultriness penetrated everywhere, and brooded over the streets and dwellings, over field and meadow. The fasting men endured it with a certain apathy--after all, they were used to it; it repeated itself every year, and no one could remember that Shivoh oser be-Tamuz had ever fallen on a cool day. It couldn't be otherwise--in midsummer, the season of ripening fruits, of the harvest. You just had to accept the situation, and, in addition to the tortures of hunger and thirst, suffer those of heat as well. But on Shivoh oser be-Tamuz in 1853 a great fright came to swell the list of agonies in the Khille at Reissnitz. Toward noon the report spread that the teacher Sandberg was missing. He had been seen in Shul at the morning service, and from there he had gone home, but after that he could not be traced further. Two boys who had been playing "cat" that morning in the street, declared they had seen him in front of his house, and then had noticed him go around the corner along the street leading to the so-called "Behnisch" meadows. That was the last that could be found out about Teacher Sandberg.