and singing, and when the guest has finished, he finds
himself face to face with Teta Elzbieta, who holds the
hat. Into it he drops a sum of money -- a dollar, or per~
haps five dollars, according to his power, and his estimate
of the value of the privilege. The guests are expected
to pay for this entertainment; if they be proper guests,
they will see that there is a neat sum left over for the
bride and bridegroom to start life upon.

Most fearful they are to contemplate, the expenses of
this entertainment. They will certainly be over two hun~
dred dollars, and maybe three hundred; and three hun~
dred dollars is more than the year's income of many a
person in this room. There are able-bodied men here
who work from early morning until late at night, in ice-
cold cellars with a 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 Sun~
day morning -- and who cannot earn three hundred dol~
lars 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 beau~
tiful! Bit by bit these poor people have given up every~
thing 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 acknowl~
edge 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

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v?