The Tamschevate house-of-study presents at this moment the following picture: the floor is covered with fresh hay, and the dust and the smell of the hay fill the whole building. Some of the men are standing at their prayers, beating their breasts in all seriousness. "We have trespassed, we have been faithless, we have robbed," with an occasional sob of contrition. Others are very busy setting up their wax-lights in boxes filled with sand; one of them, a young man who cannot live without it, betakes himself to the platform and repeats a "Bless ye the Lord." Meantime another comes slyly, and takes out two of the candles standing before the platform, planting his own in their place. Not far from the ark stands the beadle with a strap in his hand, and all the foremost householders go up to him, lay themselves down with their faces to the ground, and the beadle deals them out thirty-nine blows apiece, and not one of them bears him any grudge. Even Reb Groinom, from whom the beadle never hears anything from one Yom Kippur to another but "may you be ... "and "rascal," "impudence," "brazen face," "spendthrift," "carrion," "dog of all dogs"--and not infrequently Reb Groinom allows himself to apply his right hand to the beadle's cheek, and the latter has to take it all in a spirit of love--this same Reb Groinom now humbly approaches the same poor beadle, lies quietly down with his face to the ground, stretches himself out, and the beadle deliberately counts the strokes up to "thirty-nine Malkes." Covered with hay, Reb Groinom rises slowly, a piteous expression on his face, just as if he had been well thrashed, and he pushes a coin into the Shamash's hand. This is evidently the beadle's day! To-day he can take his revenge on his householders for the insults and injuries of a whole year! But if you want to be in the thick of it all, you must stand in the anteroom by the door, where people are crowding round the plates for collections. The treasurer sits beside a little table with the directors of the congregation; the largest plate lies before them. To one side of them sits the cantor with his plate, and beside the cantor, several house-of-study youths with theirs. On every plate lies a paper with a written notice: "Visiting the Sick," "Supporting the Fallen," "Clothing the Naked," "Talmud Torah," "Refuge for the Poor," and so forth. Over one plate, marked "The Return to the Land of Israel," presides a modern young man, a Zionist. Everyone wishing to enter the house-of-study must first go to the plates marked "Call to the Torah" and "Seat in the Shool," put in what is his due, and then throw a few kopeks into the other plates. * * * * *