and return mentally to all the landmarks of his own life, till he
reached the period corresponding to that into which he was
introducing his son. The old man took out his well-beloved short
pipe. According to his story it had been a present from his
superior officer, and it had served him ever since. He filled the
pipe, struck a match, and was enveloped in smoke.







II

You ask me whether I remember everything--he began from behind the
smoke. Why, I see it all as if it had happened yesterday. I do not
know exactly how old I was then. I remember only that my brother
Solomon became a Bar-Mitzwah at that time. Then there was Dovidl,
another brother, younger than Solomon, but older than myself; but he
had died before that time. I must have been about eleven years old.

Just then the mothers fell a-worrying: a Catcher was coming to town.
According to some he had already arrived.

At the Heder the boys were telling one another that the Catcher was
a monster, who caught boys, made soldiers out of them, and turned
them over to the Government, in place of the Jewish grown-ups that
were unwilling and unable to serve. And the boys were divided in
their opinions: some said that the Catcher was a demon, one of those