A Struggle for Existence.
(Translated from the Yiddish by M. S. Mandell)
PART FIRST.
CHAPTER I.
THROUGH one of the narrow and dirty lanes of the great city of N——, a woman was hurriedly walking with a loaf of bread under her arm. Her wrinkled forehead, deeply sunken eyes, dry, swarthy skin, and emaciated features lent to her age a score of years and gave her the appearance of a woman of fifty. The uninterrupted work she pursued, the incessant struggle with never-ending misery and misfortune, had furrowed her countenance, and her expression was that of one both weary and hopeless. Her wearing apparel consisted of a shabby, dirty dress, with a ragged kerchief over her shoulders, and upon her head she wore a dingy towel, or strip of linen.
It was one of those dreary, depressing autumn days on which it rains slowly but steadily, with a chill that penetrates to the very bones; particularly of the poor, for whom life has nothing pleas-
ant in store, even when there may be an abundance of comfort and joy for others.
The woman drew near a small, dilapidated shanty, with one window overlooking: the lane, or, more correctly, a narrow alley, ankle-deep with mud. On opening the rag-covered door, which hung by a solitary hinge, she passed through a small room, where a cobbler was working, into a still smaller one. It was scantily furnished with a small bed, a chest of drawers, a table, a couple of chairs, and a bench. In the middle of ‚the roonı, suspended from the ceiling by ropes, hung a crib, this completing the furnishing of the narrow appartment. Two children were sitting upon the bed; one, a boy of nine years, wearing a pair of torn trousers and an Arboh-Kanfes; the other, a boy, possibly five years of age, wore only:a dirty shirt of thick linen.
"Mamma! Mamma! Mamma is here!" cried the younger one, in tones in which joy and grief were blended. As he called, he jumped from the bed, the