"For instance: Yainkef-Yosef Weinshenker, a man of eighty and much respected, I can't quite explain, but he sort of turned up his nose at him. Did he _say_ anything? Heaven forbid! but there! Like that.... Turned up his nose as much as to say: Preserve us! Nothing worse! Well, what do you think? Not more than five or six years after, he was dead. Yainkef-Yosef lay in his grave. Poor Leah, the milkwoman! One was sorry for her. It was muddy, and she did not step off the stone causeway to make room for him. Would you believe it, the milk went wrong at all her customers' for a month on end! And there was no begging off! When approached on the subject, he pretended to know nothing about it, and scolded into the bargain!" "Of course,"--I wish to show off my knowledge--"though a scholar decline the honor due to him...." "A scholar? _Is_ a Làmed-Wòfnik a scholar? And you think he knew even how to read Hebrew properly? He could manage to make seven mistakes in spelling Noah. Besides, Hebrew is nothing. Hebrew doesn't count for much with us. He could not even read through the weekly portion. And his reciting the Psalms made nevertheless an impression in the highest! The last Rebbe, of blessed memory, said that Welvil (that was his name, the Làmed-Wòfnik's) cleft the seventh heaven! And you think his Psalm-singing was all! Wait till I tell you! "Hannah the Tikerin's goat (not of you be it said!) fell sick, and she drove it to the Gentile exorcist, who lives behind the village. The goat staggered, she was so ill. "On the way--it was heaven's doing--the goat met the Làmed-Wòfnik, and as she staggered along, she touched his cloak. What do you think? Cured, as I live! Hannah kept it to herself, only what happened afterwards was this: A disease broke out among the goats; literally, 'there was not a house in which there was not one dead;' then she told. The Làmed-Wòfnik was enticed into the market-place, and all the goats were driven at him." "And they all got well?" "What a question! They even gave a double quantity of milk." "The Tikerin got a groschen a goat--she became quite rich!" "And he?" "He? nothing! Why, he denied everything, and even got angry and scolded--and such an one _may_ not take money, he is no 'good Jew'--he must not be 'discovered!'" "How did he live?" "At one time he was a shoemaker (a Làmed-Wòfnik has got to be a workman, if only a water-carrier, only he must support himself with his hands); he used to go to circumcisions in a pair of his own shoes, but in his old age he was no longer any good for a shoemaker, he could no longer so much as draw the thread, let alone put in a patch--his hands shook: he just took a message, carried a canful of water, sat up with the dead at night, recited Psalms, was called up to the Tochechoh,[105] and in winter there was the stove to heat in the house-of-study." "He carried wood?"