Doctor Tanner wished to show that a man can fast forty days, and he only managed to get through twenty-eight, no more, and that with people pouring spoonfuls of water into his mouth, and giving him morsels of ice to swallow, and holding his pulse--a whole business! Chayyim Chaikin has proved that one can fast more than forty days; not, as a rule, two together, one after the other, but forty days, if not more, in the course of a year. To fast is all he asks! Who said drops of water? Who said ice? Not for him! To fast means no food and no drink from one set time to the other, a real four-and-twenty-hours. And no doctors sit beside him and hold his pulse, whispering, "Hush! Be quiet!" Well, let us hear the tale! Chayyim Chaikin is a very poor man, encumbered with many children, and they, the children, support him. They are mostly girls, and they work in a factory and make cigarette wrappers, and they earn, some one gulden, others half a gulden, a day, and that not every day. How about Sabbaths and festivals and "shtreik" days? One should thank God for everything, even in their out-of-the-way little town strikes are all the fashion! And out of that they have to pay rent--for a damp corner in a basement. To buy clothes and shoes for the lot of them! They have a dress each, but they are two to every pair of shoes. And then food--such as it is! A bit of bread smeared with an onion, sometimes groats, occasionally there is a bit of taran that burns your heart out, so that after eating it for supper, you can drink a whole night. When it comes to eating, the bread has to be portioned out like cake. "Oi, dos Essen, dos Essen seiers!" Thus Chaike, Chayyim Chaikin's wife, a poor, sick creature, who coughs all night long. "No evil eye," says the father, and he looks at his children devouring whole slices of bread, and would dearly like to take a mouthful himself, only, if he does so, the two little ones, Fradke and Beilke, will go supperless. And he cuts his portion of bread in two, and gives it to the little ones, Fradke and Beilke. Fradke and Beilke stretch out their little thin, black hands, look into their father's eyes, and don't believe him: perhaps he is joking? Children are nashers, they play with father's piece of bread, till at last they begin taking bites out of it. The mother sees and exclaims, coughing all the while: "It is nothing but eating and stuffing!" The father cannot bear to hear it, and is about to answer her, but he keeps silent--he can't say anything, it is not for him to speak! Who is he in the house? A broken potsherd, the last and least, no good to anyone, no good to them, no good to himself.