"'And why do you think it is so? What is the reason? Can he "learn" better than I do? Most certainly not. But God, blessed be His Name, seeing that he has only one Parnosseh, increases it to him. And then, another example: Look at Black Brocheh! A widow with five children and nothing but a huckstress—'
"'Listen to him! That one (would it might be said of me!) has a fortune in the business, at least thirty rubles—'
"'That is not the thing,' he gives her to understand, 'the thing is that the blessing can only reach her through the apples. The Creator governs the world by the laws of nature.'
"And he manages also to persuade her that they can economize in many ways—one can get along—
"And so it was decided: Yeruchem gave up taking snuff, and the entire household, sour milk in particular and supper in general—and they began to build.
"They built for years, but when it came to the fire-wall, Malkah had no wares, Yeruchem had no strength left in him, the eldest son had gone begging through the country, the youngest had died, and there was a fortune wanting—forty rubles for a fire-wall.
"Well, what was to be done? A coin or two changed hands, and they moved into the new house without building a fire-wall."
He took possession with rejoicing. He was a member of the Burial Society, and the community gave him a house-warming. They drank, without exaggeration, a whole barrel of beer, besides brandy and raisin-wine. It was a regular flare-up, a glorification.
But the bliss was short-lived.
A certain householder quarrelled with a neighbor of Yeruchem, with Noah the teacher. Now Noah the teacher had once been a distinguished householder, a very rich man. Besides what he had inherited from his father, he disposed of a few tidy hundreds. He had carried on a business in honey. Afterwards, when there was the quarrel relating to the Lithuanian rabbi, they got his son taken for a soldier (he is serving in the regiment to this day, with a bad lung), and he himself got involved in a lawsuit for having burnt out the rabbi.