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In the period within which our story moves, only vestiges of the old gaiety and brotherhood remained; the full al fresco flavor was evaporated. And to-day they are alt dead the Takeefim with big hearts and bigger purses, and the humorous Schnorrers, who accepted their gold, and the cheerful pious peddlers who rose from one extreme to the other, building up fabulous fortunes in marvellous ways.

Is she going to make her mother a laughing-stock! Are Mrs. Jewell and Mrs. Abrahams to dandle grandchildren in my face, to gouge out my eyes with them! It isn't that she can't get young men. Only she is so high-blown. One would think she had a father who earned five hundred a year, instead of a man who scrambles half his salary among dirty Schnorrers." "Talk not like an Epicurean," said the Reb.

"You'll ruin me, Shemuel!" moaned Simcha, wringing her hands. "You'd give away the shirt off your skin to a pack of good-for-nothing Schnorrers." "Yes, if they had only their skin in the world. Why not?" said the old Rabbi, a pacific gleam in his large gazelle-like eyes. "Perhaps my coat may have the honor to cover Elijah the prophet." "Elijah the prophet!" snorted Simcha.

"One woman is more than thou canst support," said the Rebbitzin, irritated into Yiddish, "giving away the flesh from off thy children's bones. If thou hadst been a proper father thou wouldst have saved thy money for Hannah's dowry, instead of wasting it on a parcel of vagabond Schnorrers. Even so I can give her a good stock of bedding and under-linen.

They have not the poetic vision, their ideas are as the mole's; they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence. What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight of snuffy collectors that have the air of Schnorrers? with Karlkammer's red hair for a flag and the sound of Gradkoski's nose blowing for a trumpet-peal.

"What are we all but Schnorrers, dependent on the charity of the Holy One, blessed be He? What! Have we made ourselves? Rather fall prostrate and thank Him that His bounties to us are so great that they include the privilege of giving charity to others." "But we work for our living!" said the Rebbitzin. "I wear my knees away scrubbing."

But these hopes found no lodgment in the breasts of the Jewish governors of the Smyrniote quarter, where hard-headed Sephardim were busy in toil and traffic, working with their hands, or shipping freights of figs or valonea; as for the Schnorrers, the beggars who lived by other people's wits, they were even more hard-headed than the workers.

"I make thee catch cold!" said the Rebbitzin. "When thou comest through the air of winter in thy shirt-sleeves! Thou'lt fall back upon me for poultices and mustard plasters. And then thou expectest me to have enough money to pay a Shiksah into the bargain! If I have any more of thy Schnorrers coming here I shall bundle them out neck and crop."

"Are you Meshuggah?" she asked after an awful silence. "Or have you, perhaps, saved up a tidy sum of money?" Esther flushed and shook her head. "There's no use coming to me. I'm not a rich woman, far from it; and I have been blessed with Kinder who are helpless without me. It's as I always said to your father. 'Méshe, I said, 'you're a Schnorrer and your children'll grow up Schnorrers."

"Why dost thou speak so harshly of thy fellow-creatures?" he said. "The man is a scholar and a poet, such as we have too few in Israel." "We have too many Schnorrers in Israel already," retorted Hannah. "Sh!" whispered Reb Shemuel reddening and indicating his guest with a slight movement of the eye.