Meir shook his head with a peculiar smile.
"I shall never be a Morejne!" said he. "They will not confer such an honour upon me, and I—don't wish for it!"
Schmul thought for a while, and then said:
"I heard that you have quarrelled with the great Rabbi and the members of the kahal."
Meir, without answering, looked at the horrible proofs of deep destitution around him.
"How poor you are," said he, not answering Schmul directly.
These words touched the very sensitive string of Schmul's life. His hands trembled, and his eyes glared.
"Aj, how poor we are," he moaned; "but the poorest of all living on this street is the hajet (tailor) Schmul. He must support an old, blind mother, and wife, and eight children. And how can I support them? I have no means except these two hands, which sew day and night if there is something to sew."
Speaking thus, he stretched toward Meir his two hands—true beggar's hands, dark, dirty, pricked with the needle, covered with scars made by scissors, and now trembling from grief.
"Morejne," he said more softly, bending toward the listener, "our life is hard—very hard. Everything is very expensive for us, and we have so much to pay. The Czar's officers take taxes, we must pay more for our kosher meat, and for the candles for Sabbath, we must pay to the funeral society, pay to the officers of the kahal, and for what do we not pay? Aj, vaj! From these poor houses flow rivers of money—and where does it come from? From the sweat of our brows, from our blood and the entrails of our children who grow thin from hunger! Not a long time ago you asked me, Morejne, why my room was dirty. And how can we help it when eleven of us must live in one room, and in the passages there are two goats, which nourish us with their milk. Morejne, you asked me why my wife is so thin and old, although she has not yet lived many years, and why my children are always sick! Morejne, kosher meat costs us so much that we never eat it. We eat bread with onion, and we drink goat's-milk. On Sabbath we have fish only when you, Morejne, come to see us and leave us a silver coin. All in this street are poor—very poor, but the poorest is hajet Schmul, with his blind mother, thin wife and eight children."