Gittel remembered that when Avremel was married, the festivities had lasted a whole week, till over the second cheerful Sabbath, when the bride, the new daughter-in-law, was led to the Shool! The day after the wedding Gittel drove home, sad, broken in spirit, as people return from the cemetery where they have buried a child, where they have laid a fragment of their own heart, of their own life, under the earth. Driving home in the carriage, she consoled herself with this at least: "A good thing that Beile and Zlatke, Avremel and Yossel were not there. The shame will be less, there will be less talk, nobody will know what I am suffering." Gittel arrived the picture of gloom. When she left for the wedding, she had looked suddenly twenty years younger, and now she looked twenty years older than before! POVERTY I was living in Mezkez at the time, and Seinwill Bookbinder lived there too. But Heaven only knows where he is now! Even then his continual pallor augured no long residence in Mezkez, and he was a Yadeschlever Jew with a wife and six small children, and he lived by binding books. Who knows what has become of him! But that is not the question--I only want to prove that Seinwill was a great liar. If he is already in the other world, may he forgive me--and not be very angry with me, if he is still living in Mezkez! He was an orthodox and pious Jew, but when you gave him a book to bind, he never kept his word. When he took a book and even the whole of his pay in advance, he would swear by beard and earlocks, by wife and children, and by the Messiah, that he would bring it back to you by Sabbath, but you had to be at him for weeks before the work was finished and sent in. Once, on a certain Friday, I remembered that next day, Sabbath, I should have a few hours to myself for reading. A fortnight before I had given Seinwill a new book to bind for me. It was just a question whether or not he would return it in time, so I set out for his home, with the intention of bringing back the book, finished or not. I had paid him his twenty kopeks in advance, so what excuses could he possibly make? Once for all, I would give him a bit of my mind, and take away the work unfinished--it will be a lesson for him for the next time! Thus it was, walking along and deciding on what I should say to Seinwill, that I turned into the street to which I had been directed. Once in the said street, I had no need to ask questions, for I was at once shown a little, low house, roofed with mouldered slate. I stooped a little by way of precaution, and entered Seinwill's house, which consisted of a large kitchen. Here he lived with his wife and children, and here he worked. In the great stove that took up one-third of the kitchen there was a cheerful crackling, as in every Jewish home on a Friday.