Chapter 8 No.8

Lord of the World, may there never again be such a winter as there was then!

Not the oldest man there could recall one like it. The snow came down in drifts, and never stopped. One could and might have sworn on a scroll of the Law, that the great Jewish God was angry with the Kamenivke Jews, and had commanded His angels to shovel down on Kamenivke all the snow that had lain by in all the seven heavens since the sixth day of creation, so that the sinful town might be a ruin and a desolation.

And the terrible, fiery frosts!

Frozen people were brought into the town nearly every day.

Oi, Jews, how Bertzi Wasserführer struggled, what a time he had of it! Enemies of Zion, it was nearly the death of him!

And suddenly the snow began to stop falling, all at once, and then things were worse than ever-there was a sea of water, an ocean of mud.

And Passover coming on with great strides!

For three days before Passover he had not come home to sleep. Who talks of eating, drinking, and sleeping? He and his man toiled day and night, like six horses, like ten oxen.

The last day before Passover was the worst of all. His horse suddenly came to the conclusion that sooner than live such a life, it would die. So it died and vanished somewhere in the depths of the Kamenivke clay.

And Bertzi the water-carrier and his man had to drag the cart with the great water-barrel themselves, the whole day till long after dark.