MALKA.


The Sunday Fair, so long associated with Petticoat Lane, is dying hard,
and is still vigorous; its glories were in full swing on the dull, gray
morning when Moses Ansell took his way through the Ghetto. It was near
eleven o'clock, and the throng was thickening momently. The vendors
cried their wares in stentorian tones, and the babble of the buyers was
like the confused roar of a stormy sea. The dead walls and hoardings
were placarded with bills from which the life of the inhabitants could
be constructed. Many were in Yiddish, the most hopelessly corrupt and
hybrid jargon ever evolved. Even when the language was English the
letters were Hebrew. Whitechapel, Public Meeting, Board School, Sermon,
Police, and other modern banalities, glared at the passer-by in the
sacred guise of the Tongue associated with miracles and prophecies,
palm-trees and cedars and seraphs, lions and shepherds and harpists.

Moses stopped to read these hybrid posters--he had nothing better to
do--as he slouched along. He did not care to remember that dinner was
due in two hours. He turned aimlessly into Wentworth Street, and studied
a placard that hung in a bootmaker's window. This was the announcement
it made in jargon:

Riveters, Clickers, Lasters, Finishers,
Wanted.

BARUCH EMANUEL,
Cobbler.