The day on which Chayyim Chaikin fasts is, as I told you, his best day, and a _real_ fast day, like the Ninth of Ab, for instance--he is ashamed to confess it--is a festival for him! You see, it means not to eat, not to be a beast, not to be guilty of the children's blood, to earn the reward of a Mitzveh, and to weep to heart's content on the ruins of the Temple. For how can one weep when one is full? How can a full man grieve? Only he can grieve whose soul is faint within him! The good year knows how some folk answer it to their conscience, giving in to their insides--afraid of fasting! Buy them a groschen worth of oats, for charity's sake! Thus would Chayyim Chaikin scorn those who bought themselves off the fast, and dropped a hard coin into the collecting box. The Ninth of Ab is the hardest fast of all--so the world has it. Chayyim Chaikin cannot see why. The day is long, is it? Then the night is all the shorter. It's hot out of doors, is it? Who asks you to go loitering about in the sun? Sit in the Shool and recite the prayers, of which, thank God, there are plenty. "I tell you," persists Chayyim Chaikin, "that the Ninth of Ab is the easiest of the fasts, because it is the best, the very best! "For instance, take the Day of Atonement fast! It is written, 'And you shall mortify your bodies.' What for? To get a clean bill and a good year. "It doesn't say that you are to fast on the Ninth of Ab, but you fast of your own accord, because how could you eat on the day when the Temple was wrecked, and Jews were killed, women ripped up, and children dashed to pieces? "It doesn't say that you are to weep on the Ninth of Ab, but you _do_ weep. How could anyone restrain his tears when he thinks of what we lost that day?" "The pity is, there should be only one Ninth of Ab!" says Chayyim Chaikin. "Well, and the Seventeenth of Tammuz!" suggests some one. "And there is only one Seventeenth of Tammuz!" answers Chayyim Chaikin, with a sigh. "Well, and the Fast of Gedaliah? and the Fast of Esther?" continues the same person. "Only one of each!" and Chayyim Chaikin sighs again. "E, Reb Chayyim, you are greedy for fasts, are you?" "More fasts, more fasts!" says Chayyim Chaikin, and he takes upon himself to fast on the eve of the Ninth of Ab as well, two days at a stretch. What do you think of fasting two days in succession? Isn't that a treat? It is hard enough to have to break one's fast after the Ninth of Ab, without eating on the eve thereof as well. One forgets that one _has_ insides, that such a thing exists as the necessity to eat, and one is free of the habit that drags one down to the level of the beast. The difficulty lies in the drinking! I mean, in the _not_ drinking. "If I" (thinks Chayyim Chaikin) "allowed myself one glass of water a day, I could fast a whole week till Sabbath."