Mottke the Vagabond Author:Sholem Asch Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II HOW MOTTKE THE VAGABOND CAME UPON EARTH THE news of his coining was received with no parti- cular gladness. This is how it all happened: Blind Lib... more » — he was now known by no other name — lived in The Cellar with Zlattke — who had so lost her color that by this time she should have been called "the yellow" rather than "the red."— Here with them dwelt such folks as paid no rent, but had, rather, a claim upon the place through long occupation of it. For the cellar was under a ruined house, and had form- erly served as bakery. Half of the place was occupied by Faygel, the fruit-woman, with her baskets, sacks, and filthy burlap-bags. It was she who held first claim upon the cellar; she had lived there since the days when it had been a bakery. The other side was occupied by the tall spooler, nicknamed "Adam's apple" by the street children because of the prominence of that part of his anatomy. Every summer day, before break- fast, he would go out into the street with his large spools that took up fully half the thoroughfare, and the children would wonder how on earth he ever found room for all that apparatus in the cellar! The third neighbor hi the cellar was Meyer, the womens' teacher, who, being a nephew of Faygel, shared some- thing of her right of possession. His place was in the corner, near the window. To be sure, they called him the womens' teacher, but he wasn't really that, although a few little girls used to come in after breakfast, and he would teach them to read from the Tsena Urena, indicating the text with his pointer. But he was indeed an expert letter-writer, and to him the women came to have him write letters for them, or read one which they had received. At such times Meyer would place his spectacles upon his nose, take the letter over to the window, an...« less