quarter of an inch of water on the floor--men who for six or seven
months in the year never see the sunlight from Sunday afternoon till
the next Sunday morning--and who cannot earn three hundred dollars in
a year. There are little children here, scarce in their teens, who can
hardly see the top of the work benches--whose parents have lied to get
them their places--and who do not make the half of three hundred dollars
a year, and perhaps not even the third of it. And then to spend such
a sum, all in a single day of your life, at a wedding feast! (For
obviously it is the same thing, whether you spend it at once for your
own wedding, or in a long time, at the weddings of all your friends.)

It is very imprudent, it is tragic--but, ah, it is so beautiful! Bit by
bit these poor people have given up everything else; but to this
they cling with all the power of their souls--they cannot give up the
veselija! To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to
acknowledge defeat--and the difference between these two things is what
keeps the world going. The veselija has come down to them from a far-off
time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave
and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could
break his chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that
once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all
its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely
a bubble upon the surface of a river, a thing that one may toss about
and play with as a juggler tosses his golden balls, a thing that one may
quaff, like a goblet of rare red wine. Thus having known himself for
the master of things, a man could go back to his toil and live upon the
memory all his days.


Endlessly the dancers swung round and round--when they were dizzy they