of new tenement "barracks."

"Glad to meechye," Mrs. Nodelman welcomed me. "Meyer should have broughchye up long ago. Why did you keep Mr. Levinsky away, Meyer? Was you afraid you might have reason to be jealous?"

"That's just it. She hit it right. I told you she was a smart girl, didn't
I, Levinsky?"
"Don't be uneasy, Meyer. Mr. Levinsky won't even look at an old woman like me. It's a pretty girl he's fishin' for. Ainchye, Mr. Levinsky?"

She was middle-aged, with small features inconspicuously traced in a bulging mass of full-blooded flesh. This was why her mother-in-law called her "meat-ball face." She had a hoarse voice, and altogether she might have given me the impression of being drunk had there not been something pleasing in her hoarseness as well as in that droll face of hers. That she was American-born was clear from the way she spoke her unpolished English. Was Nodelman the henpecked husband that his mother advertised him to be? I wondered whether the frequency with which his wife used his first name could be accepted as evidence to the contrary

They had six children: a youth of nineteen named Maurice who was the image of his father and, having spent two years at college, was with him in the clothing business; a high-school boy who had his mother's face and whose name was Sidney—an appellation very popular among our people as "swell American"; and four smaller children, the youngest being a little girl of six.

"What do you think of my stock, Levinsky?" Nodelman asked. "Quite a lot, isn't it? May no evil eye strike them. What do you think of the baby? Come here, Beatrice! Recite something for uncle!" The command had barely left his mouth when Beatrice sprang to her feet and burst out mumbling something in a kindergarten singsong. This lasted some minutes Then she courtesied, shook her skirts, and slipped back into her seat

"She is only six and she is already more educated than her father,"
Nodelman said. "And Sidney he's studyin' French at high school.
Sidney, talk some French to Mr. Levinsky. He'll understand you.
Come on, show Mr. Levinsky you ain't going to be as ignorant as
your pa."
The scene was largely a stereotyped copy of the one