And while you were writing your ugly words and calumnies, they, so to say, were risking their lives for me--they sent for doctors, made up my bed and re-made it, gave me medicine, and even pawned a few of their treasures, so that help should be there. They even brought me a bottle of wine. I never touched a drop, upon my word! but they meant it well. Besides that they measured the height of the fever three times a day with a little glass tube--the doctors here order it to be done. And who told me all this? The butcher and his wife. Had it not been for Leeb the reader and Sophie, you would be a widow. And at the very same time, you write such foolish things. _Phê_, it is a shame! I really don't know how you are to come to America, how you are to live in America! I hope, dear Hannah'li, that you will throw off this foolishness, and not darken my life with any more such letters. I often don't sleep at night. I imagine I see you plainly sitting at the table writing to me. You write and scratch out, and write and scratch out, and I see the letter, but I cannot read the words at the distance, and it grieves me very much that I cannot read the letter so far off. And you take the pen and put it into the child's hand--the child is in your lap--and guide its fingers! And you see, my dear wife, that I send you five dollars every week, that I manage with very little. And I have only three shirts altogether. I cannot ask Sophie to buy me any, and the Shochet's wife has given birth to a baby, and is not yet about again. The circumcision, please God, will be to-morrow. Yes--but that is not to the point. What I mean is, be reasonable, for your own sake, and for the sake of me, your husband SHMÙEL MÖSHEH. A postscript, written sideways down the whole length of the letter: I have this minute received another letter from you. And now, my Hannah'li, I tell you once and for all, it is enough to make one's hair stand on end, and hardly to be believed! You write that you may as well let your hair grow and talk with gentlemen, that you also can dance and sing--and that you will go to the Rebbe's and get him to send a "special death" to both of us. What do you mean? What words are these? Lord of the world, what has come to you? I think and think, till I don't know _what_ to think! This is my advice: Put away your evil-speaking and calumnies and curses! They are not for such as you! And I tell you simply this, that if you do not soon write the letter a good Jewess ought to write, I shall send and fetch the child away without you--do you hear? Otherwise--I shall throw myself into the sea. It is enough, heaven forbid, to drive one mad! Your husband S. M. 3 Two letters which Hannah received from her relative in Lublin, and one from her brother. FIRST LETTER To my friend, the excellent lady and esteemed and worthy woman, Mistress Hannah: