The clear voices rang through the rooms, awaking sympathetic echoes in every corner. The home wore a new aspect, and the sun shone even more brightly than before and in more friendly, kindly fashion.
The mother spread a little cloth at the edge of the table, gave them milk and sandwiches, and looked at them as they ate--each child the picture of the mother, her eyes, her hair, her nose, her look, her gestures--they ate just as she would do.
And Rosalie feels much better and happier. She doesn't care so much now about the furniture being old, the dresses worn, the china service not being whole, about the wrinkles round her eyes and in her forehead. She only minds about her husband's being so worn-out, so absent-minded that he cannot take pleasure in the children as she can.
Born, 1872, in Mohileff (Lithuania), White Russia; refused admission to Gymnasium in Moscow under percentage restrictions; 1889-1891, secretary to Bene Zion in Vitebsk; 1891-1893, student in Vienna; 1893, co-editor of Spektor's Hausfreund and Perez's Yom-tov Blättlech; 1893, first sketch published in New York Arbeiterzeitung; 1896, studied philosophy in Berlin; 1899, came to New York, and edited Das Abendblatt, a daily, and Der Arbeiter, a weekly; 1912, founder and co-editor of Die Yiddishe Wochenschrift; author of short stories, sketches, an essay on the Yiddish drama, and ten dramas, among them Yesurun, Eisik Scheftel, Die Mutter, Die Familie Zwie, Der Oitzer, Der eibiger Jüd (first part of a series of Messiah dramas), Der stummer Moschiach, etc.; one volume of collected dramas, Dramen, Warsaw, 1909.
The seventy-year-old Reb Shloimeh's son, whose home was in the country, sent his two boys to live with their grandfather and acquire town, that is, Gentile, learning.
"Times have changed," considered Reb Shloimeh; "it can't be helped!" and he engaged a good teacher for the children, after making inquiries here and there.
"Give me a teacher who can tell the whole of _their_ Law, as the saying goes, standing on one leg!" he would say to his friends, with a smile.
At seventy-one years of age, Reb Shloimeh lived more indoors than out, and he used to listen to the teacher instructing his grandchildren.
"I shall become a doctor in my old age!" he would say, laughing.