"They ought to take her into the Aged Widows' Home. I'm sure I gave her
_my_ votes."

"God shall bless you for it. But people say I was lucky enough to get
my Benjamin into the Orphan Asylum, and that I ought not to have brought
her from Poland. They say we grow enough poor old widows here."

"People say quite right--at least she would have starved in, a Yiddishë
country, not in a land of heathens."

"But she was lonely and miserable out there, exposed to all the malice
of the Christians. And I was earning a pound a week. Tailoring was a
good trade then. The few roubles I used to send her did not always reach
her."

"Thou hadst no right to send her anything, nor to send for her. Mothers
are not everything. Thou didst marry my cousin Gittel, peace be upon
him, and it was thy duty to support _her_ and her children. Thy mother
took the bread out of the mouth of Gittel, and but for her my poor
cousin might have been alive to-day. Believe me it was no _Mitzvah_."

_Mitzvah_ is a "portmanteau-word." It means a commandment and a good
deed, the two conceptions being regarded as interchangeable.

"Nay, thou errest there," answered Moses. "'Gittel was not a phoenix
which alone ate not of the Tree of Knowledge and lives for ever. Women
have no need to live as long as men, for they have not so many
_Mitzvahs_ to perform as men; and inasmuch as"--here his tones
involuntarily assumed the argumentative sing-song--"their souls profit
by all the _Mitzvahs_ performed by their husbands and children, Gittel