KEVER YISROEL
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When old Sender Bernik and his wife Leah came to America people wondered. Even some of the immigration ofhicials at Ellis Island, in whom the many unusual sights of daily occurrence that they witness 'have atrophied the capacity for wonder, even they examined the old couple curiously; the old man tall and well-built, with long, thin, gray beard, rather large nose and deep-set eyes, carrying in one hand a bulging, well-strapped valise, and holding in the other the hand of his wife, a slight woman with very small, thin features, her head covered with a dark-brown wig. They had the air of being utterly alone and apart from the rest of the world, self-sufficient withal, and wholly unconscious of the crriosity they aroused.
The money that old Sender was able to show satisfied the oflicials that he and his wife would not fall a charge on the community, and Sender and Leah betook themselves temporarily to the home of a “andsman.” \
But it was the “landsleit” especially who wondered,. They simply could not understand it. Why should a man whose substance and prestige lay in the town of Sklov, in Russia, whose residence in the main street there was of the finest, whose position among the townsfolk and in the councils of the synagogue was the highest, whose children were rearing proud and prosperous families in Sklov and in neighboring towns, why, they asked, should he, apparently in his right mind, sell his home and property, abandon his position and family, and betake himself in his declining years, with a frail, sickly wife, to a strange land where he could find neither kith nor kin? True, his youngest son was in America, living in New York, in fact, but then— did he not know .what had taken place with this youngest son of his, with his Shloimele, the darling of his old age, whom he had sent off to America, when that was found to be the only way the young man „ould avoid military service? Was it pos-
sible that the rumors concerning this son’s act had failed to reach him even in Sklov? Reb Sender must certainly know that his Shloimele had abjured the faith of his fathers and had wedded himself to a Christian woman, for how can „such a thing be kept secret? Would he come to America, then, for the. sake of this son? Was. it possible that Reb Sender, the proud and taciturn, would recognize him and abandon everything for his sake? What then, did Reb Sender perhaps expect to restore his son to what he had renounced? Ai! folly of follies, for the many things reported about the son, proved that he was beyond recall! DBesides, how would he tear his son away from his Christian wife, of whom he was so enamored? But God Himself, it seemed, was punishing this son most fully, for who was it that brought the rumor the other day that Shloimele was on the decline, that he was suffering from consumption and that his days were numbered? Who knows? perhaps he was already dead, it was so seldom that any report concerning 'him reached the “landsleit.” - i
And so they wondered and lost themselves in conjectures. But Mr. Feitel Vogelstein, at whose house the old couple put up immediately after their landing, did not long remain in doubt. For that very same evening Reb Sender approached him and begged him to help make inquiries concerning his son’s whereabouts.
“But,—but, Reb Sender,” Mr. Vogelstein stammered, “I suppose you know, that,— that your son, ——”
“Yes, yes, I know,—we know everything,” the old man replied, slowly gazing at his wife, who sat small and forlorn, her hands folded in her lap. “We know everything,” he repeated, “but we want to see him, just to see him.”
Mr. Vogelstein was in a perspiration.
"But how can you see him?" he implored. "He lives way up somewhere, weiss ich wo? He won't even let you