"In the little town life is beginning to stir. Here and there one sees a peasant wagon on which the dew drops of the night are still hanging. Here and there a Jew, eyes heavy with sleep. The show windows and house doors are for the most part locked. For many of the inhabitants the day has not yet begun. . . . This day shall be like yesterday, like to-morrow."
A storm rushes over the woods. The storm comes like a mighty giant that wishes to swallow the world or it seems as though God himself were spreading out His black mantle: "The end of the world! Neither heaven nor earth, neither beginning nor end! Black, ominous, dull, empty. . . . Suddenly Heaven opens for a second. . . . A blinding light has torn the clouds. Stabbed by a flaming dagger the giant dies—a confused moaning fills the air. It rains." But the storm passes. "The Heaven is clear and blue as if nothing had happened. The air is clearer and purer, the earth washed clean by the water."
"DIE Mutter." It is in a little Hebrew school in a small town in Russia. The rabbi has gone to say the evening prayer, leaving the small boys to study. Instead they begin to talk of various subjects. Mothers are discussed and each boy praised his most highly. One pale little chap with large eyes says, "My mother also . . ." and then stops. One of the boys laughs uncontrolledly and then there is an embarrassing silence. The teacher returns. The little Josek, however, cannot keep his attention on the book:
"The 'crazy Trajna' stands life-like before him. Out there at the well she stands. . . . He sees her plainly. . . . All too well he knows that dirty sun-burned face plowed through by a thousand wrinkles, those great blood-shot eyes with the swollen, sore lids. . . .
"He remembers her, yes, he remembers. . . . He was still a little boy then, when the teacher carried him to school in his arms. He cried then and hung tightly with both hands to the apron of his mother.
"Mother! . . . this woman his mother?"
And so the emotions of the boy are set forth in memories telling us of his mother before she was insane and now, when she is known to all the village as the "crazy Trajna." The time when he found her insane is described. It was raining and he was hurrying home from school. Suddenly he sees his mother near his father's house:
"There at the corner she stands. . . . Trembling for cold she seeks protection under any roof. . . . The boy stands as rooted to the ground, without turning his gaze from her. The water flows in streams from his coat. She has turned her glassy eyes on him. Slowly as though following some inner force she comes closer to him. He is not able to move from the spot; something unspeakable gleams in those glassy eyes. . . .
"Now he feels in her the mother. . . . His heart beats as though to break. Always closer to him she comes. A hot wave of blood flows through all his limbs and rises to his head. He trembles as in fever.