"Bad times!" sighed my neighbor.
A few minutes' silence, but he could not be quiet long.
"Tell me, I beg of you, what is the good of the stories you write? I don't mean to you," he amended himself. "Heaven forbid! A Jew must earn a living, if he has to suck it out of the wall—that is not what I mean—what will a Jew not do for a living? I am riding in the post-chaise, and not in an 'opportunity,'[2] because I could not hear of one. Heaven knows whether I'm not sitting on Shatnez.[3] I mean the people—what is the good of the stories to them? What is the object of them? What do they put into story books?" Then, answering himself: "I guess it's just a question of women's fashions, like crinolines!"
"And you," I ask, "have never dipped into a story-book?"
"I can tell you: I do know a little about them, as much as that."
And he measured off a small piece of his finger, but it was dark in the chaise.
"Did they interest you?"
"Me? Heaven forbid! It was all through my wife! This, you see, is how it happened: It must be five or six years ago—six—a year after the wedding, we were still boarding with my father—when my wife grew poorly. Not that she was ill; she went about as usual, but she was not up to the mark.
"One day I asked her what was wrong.
"But, really—" he caught himself up. "I don't know why I should bother you with all this."