"And the Jewish hospital?" I suggested.
"He has been there twice—they operated on him."
"Well, well," I urged, "why does he not stay there?"
The man groaned, the woman cried, some sick child in the neighbourhood woke with the noise and mixed his sickly crying with theirs and the moaning of the wind outside. It was a pitiful scene. I started my interrogation.
The man was a musician, a fiddler. He was not a member of the Union. He had been in America two years, and sick from the first moment he had come. "And how do you get along?" I asked. "From where do you get money for bread?" Again the woman cried. Soon the man fell asleep. I heard his heavy breathing and felt the odour of putrefaction emanating from his body. Pitilessly I insisted on getting an answer to my question: "From what do you live?"
"There was not a piece of bread in the house to-day," was the answer.
"Yes, but where did you get yesterday's bread?"
"We had no coals for the last four days."
"But from where did you get it before that?" I argued.