A HEROINE OF SEDLITZ
LITTLE Hagar Slusch was arguing with Simon Streletski, a ten-year-old social democrat, and arranging picture postcards in the shop so that intending purchasers should not be kept waiting while she searched for a favorite Rabbi, a colored American view, or a magnificent New Year's greeting from Sedlitz with appropriate verses in Yiddish. Her argument was interrupted by the entrance of her stepmother, a handsome and rather heavy-looking widow, at whose appearance Simon dived underneath the counter.
"David is coming home to-day," she announced. The bundle of Rabbis slipped out of Hagar's hands.
"God, it will be good to see him again," she cried. "I have prayed every night for his return."
Mrs. Slusch regarded her daughter severely.
"Well, your prayers have brought the mischief. There is a strike at the University of Lodz and David cannot continue his studies."
Hagar's pretty mouth drooped, her brother would be disappointed and his troubles hurt far more keenly than her own.
She was barely ten years old, David was eight years her senior, and the most brilliant member of a clever family.
His elder brother, Joseph, a hard-working young man, had succeeded his father in the shop, and by marvelous thrift had managed to keep the wolf from the door.
Like all the Jewish youth of Russia, Hagar had known no proper childhood. Ever since she could remember she had been familiar with the tragedies of life, with the poverty and persecutions sur-
rounding her. Together with Simon Streletski, she discussed and argued her theories on life. Simon was embittered, perhaps his permanently dissatisfied appetite and his consumptive cough were accountable for his gloomy views.
His parents were terribly poor, and sat all day on the market place, selling wonderful looking wooden animals. They lived in a small, dark room, some nine feet square, underneath the Slusch's shop. To add to their burdens they were obliged to support an aged, bed-ridden grandmother, who had lost her memory, and was responsible for Simon's education, or rather, want of it. Simon had longed to go to school, but alas, whenever vacancies occurred cleverer boys were selected. He soon found a way out of his grandmother's tedious lessons. Every morning, the boy would give her a prayer-book and tell her it was the Sabbath. Then he would steal into the Slusch's shop and continue his discussions with Hagar and often have a meal with her. Hagar was a Jewish Nationalist, and she loved to tell Simon how David was going to take all the Jews out of Russia to a Jewish land. Simon was incredulous, and although he shared Hagar's admiration of David, the Great, he would never believe that God would do anything for the Jews.
"I don't believe there is a God," he volunteered one day, "and if there is, He has forgotten us."
When Hagar remonstrated, he replied, "You see no one looks after us. We have often neither food nor fire. Mother works eighteen hours a day, she used to do tailoring till her eyesight got too bad, and now she's out all day in the cold and wet with