Children of the Tenements | Page 9

hand and a trumpet and a pair of drumsticks in the other,
viewing with shining eyes the wagon and its cargo, the gun and all the
rest. From every cot necks were stretched, and grinning faces watched
the show. In the excess of his joy the Kid let out a blast on the trumpet
that fairly shook the building. As if it were a signal, the boys jumped
out of bed and danced a breakdown about him in their shirt-tails, even
Gimpy joining in.
"Holy Moses!" said Stretch, looking down, "if Santy Claus ain't been
here an' forgot his hull kit, I'm blamed!"

THE SLIPPER-MAKER'S FAST
Isaac Josephs, slipper-maker, sat up on the fifth floor of his Allen Street
tenement, in the gray of the morning, to finish the task he had set
himself before Yom Kippur. Three days and three nights he had
worked without sleep, almost without taking time to eat, to make ready
the two dozen slippers that were to enable him to fast the fourth day
and night for conscience' sake, and now they were nearly done. As he
saw the end of his task near, he worked faster and faster while the
tenement slept.
Three years he had slaved for the sweater, stinted and starved himself,
before he had saved enough to send for his wife and children, awaiting
his summons in the city by the Black Sea. Since they came they had
slaved and starved together; for wages had become steadily less, work
more grinding, and hours longer and later. Still, of that he thought little.
They had known little else, there or here; they were together now. The
past was dead; the future was their own, even in the Allen Street
tenement, toiling night and day at starvation wages. To-morrow was the
feast, their first Yom Kippur since they had come together
again,--Esther, his wife, and Ruth and little Ben,--the feast when, priest
and patriarch of his own house, he might forget his bondage and be free.
Poor little Ben! The hand that smoothed the soft leather on the last took
a tenderer, lingering touch as he glanced toward the stool where the
child had sat watching him work till his eyes grew small. Brave little
Ben, almost a baby yet, but so patient, so wise, and so strong!
The deep breathing of the sleeping children reached him from their crib.
He smiled and listened, with the half-finished slipper in his hand. As he
sat thus, a great drowsiness came upon him. He nodded once, twice; his
hands sank into his lap, his head fell forward upon his chest. In the
silence of the morning he slept, worn out with utter weariness.
He awoke with a guilty start to find the first rays of the dawn struggling
through his window, and his task yet undone. With desperate energy he
seized the unfinished slipper to resume his work. His unsteady hand

upset the little lamp by his side, upon which his burnishing-iron was
heating. The oil blazed up on the floor and ran toward the nearly
finished pile of work. The cloth on the table caught fire. In a fever of
terror and excitement, the slipper-maker caught it in his hands, wrung it,
and tore at it to smother the flames. His hands were burned, but what of
that? The slippers, the slippers! If they were burned, it was ruin. There
would be no Yom Kippur, no feast of Atonement, no fast--rather, no
end of it; starvation for him and his.
He beat the fire with his hands and trampled it with his feet as it burned
and spread on the floor. His hair and his beard caught fire: With a
despairing shriek he gave it up and fell before the precious slippers,
barring, the way of the flames to them with his body.
The shriek woke his wife. She sprang out of bed, snatched up a blanket,
and threw it upon the fire. It went out, was smothered under the blanket.
The slipper-maker sat up, panting and grateful. His Yom Kippur was
saved.
The tenement awoke to hear of the fire in the morning, when all Jew
town was stirring with preparations for the feast. The slipper-maker's
wife was setting the house to rights for the holiday then. Two
half-naked children played about her knees, asking eager questions
about it. Asked if her husband had often to work so hard, and what he
made by it, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "The rent and a crust."
And yet all this labor and effort to enable him to fast one day according
to the old dispensation, when all the rest of the days he fasted according
to the new!

DEATH COMES TO CAT ALLEY
The dead-wagon stopped at the mouth of Cat Alley. Its