In the Ghetto, where "the evening and the morning are one day," New Year's Eve is at its height at noon. The muddy market-places roar, and the joyous medley of squeezing humanity moves slowly through the crush of mongers, pickpockets, and beggars. It is one of those festival occasions on which even those who have migrated from the Ghetto gravitate back to purchase those dainties whereof the heathen have not the secret, and to look again upon the old familiar scene. There is a stir of goodwill and gaiety, a reconciliation of old feuds in view of the solemn season of repentance, and a washing-down of enmities in rum.
At the point where the two main market-streets met, a grey-haired elderly woman stood and begged.
Poor Flutter-Duck!
Her husband dead, after a protracted illness that frittered away his savings; her daughter lost; her home a mattress in the corner of a strange family's garret; her faded prettiness turned to ugliness: her figure thin and wasted; her yellow-wrinkled face framed in a frowsy shawl; her clothes tattered and flimsy; Flutter-Duck stood and schnorred.
But Flutter-Duck did not do well. Her feather-head was not equal to the demands of her profession. She had selected what was ostensibly the coign of most vantage, forgetting that though everybody in the market must pass her station, they would already have been mulcted in the one street or the other.
MARKET-DAY IN THE GHETTO.
But she held out her hand pertinaciously, appealing to every passer-by of importance, and throwing audible curses after those that ignored her. The cold of the bleak autumn day and the apathy of the public chilled her to the bone; the tears came into her eyes as she thought of all her misery and of the happy time—only a couple of years ago—when New Year meant new dresses. Only a grey fringe—the last vanity of pauperdom—remained of all her fashionableness. No more the plaited chignon, the silk gown, the triple necklace,—the dazzling exterior that made her too proud to speak to admiring neighbours,—only hunger and cold and mockery and loneliness. No plumes could she borrow, now that she really needed them to cover her nakedness. She who had reigned over a work-room, who had owned a husband and a marriageable daughter, who had commanded a maid-servant, who had driven in shilling cabs!
Oh, if she could only find her daughter—that lost creature by whose wedding-canopy she should have stood, radiant, the envy of Montague Street! But this was not a thought of to-day. It was at the bottom of all her thoughts always, ever since that fatal night. During the first year she was always on the lookout, peering into every woman's face, running after every young couple that looked like Emanuel and Rachel. But repeated disappointment dulled her. She had no energy for anything except begging. Yet the hope of finding Rachel was the gleam of idealism that kept her soul alive.
The hours went by, but the streams of motley pedestrians and the babel of vociferous vendors and chattering buyers did not slacken. Females were in the great majority, housewives from far and near foraging for Festival supplies. In vain Flutter-Duck wished them "A Good Sealing." It seemed as if her own Festival would be black and bitter as the Feast of Ab.