Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto

z, on the third floor of a rickety old tenement house, that Jake and Gitl, for the first time

d haggard, was "in her own hair," thatched with a broad-brimmed winter hat of a brown colour, and in a jacket of black beaver. The rustic, "greenhornlike" expression was completely gone from her face and manner, and, although she now looked bewildered and as if terror-stricken, there was noticeable about her a suggestion of that peculiar

f his wife's signals to desist and not to risk the fee. Gitl, prompted by Mrs. Kavarsky, responded to all questions with an air of dazed resignation, while Jake, ever conscious of his guard's glance, gave his answers with bravado. At

nkled with down, presided with pious dignity, though apparently ill at ease, at the head of the table. Alternately stroking his yellowish-gray beard and curling his scanty side locks, he

presence terrified her, and at the same time it melted her soul in a fire, torturing yet sweet, which impelled her at one moment t

defy him, and as if devised for that express purpose. Every time she and her adviser caught his eye, a feeling of devouring hate for both would rise in his heart. He was panting to see his son; and, while he was

t, getting up with the document in his

sunlight, filtering in through a grimy window-pane and falling lurid upon the rabbi's wrinkled brow, enhanced the impressiveness of the spectacle. A momentary pa

shful serenity, "here is the writ of divorce a

watched Gitl, who answer

with the same free will and readiness with which thou hast married thy husband. Should there be

saresfied," whispe

iet" murmured Gitl, lo

t she accepts the divorce of her own free will," th

ivorce is good only upon condition that you are also divorced by the Government of the land-by the court-

manner. "I have already told you that the dvosh of the cou

for the fateful piece of paper. She obeyed mechanically, her cheeks turning ghastly pale. Jake, also pale to his lips, his brows contracted, received the paper

. And by this divorce thou art separat

w word was followed by its Yiddish translation. Her arms shook so that

ited the writ and

d; but at the same moment she gave a violent tremble, and with

the room, presently followed by Mamie's ambas

she sat staring about her, when, suddenly awakening to the meaning of the ordeal she had jus

writ, and having caused the witnesses to do lik

her heart would break, "that you dare not marry again before ninety-one days, counting from to-day,

ed Mrs. Kavarsky. "Let him go I know w

et, he remarked sheepishly: "He may wed even to-day." Whereupon Gitl's sobs bec

t rid of the lump of leavened bread. What say you, rabbi? A rowdy, a sinner of Israel, a regely loifer, may no good Jew know him! Nev

ffect. Gitl at once composed her

s hint, the rabbi's wife took

she got

wedding canopy I shall employ no other man than your husband