Moses Ansell married mainly because all men are mortal.  He knew he would die and he wanted an heir.  Not to inherit anything, but to say Kaddish for him. Kaddish is the most beautiful and wonderful mourning prayer ever written.  Rigidly excluding all references to death and grief, it exhausts itself in supreme glorification of the Eternal and in supplication for peace upon the House of Israel.  But its significance has been gradually transformed; human nature, driven away with a pitchfork, has avenged itself by regarding the prayer as a mass, not without purgatorial efficacy, and so the Jew is reluctant to die without leaving some one qualified to say Kaddish after him every day for a year, and then one day a year.  That is one reason why sons are of such domestic importance.

Moses had only a mother in the world when he married Gittel Silverstein, and he hoped to restore the balance of male relatives by this reckless measure.  The result was six children, three girls and three Kaddishim.  In Gittel, Moses found a tireless helpmate.  During her lifetime the family always lived in two rooms, for she had various ways of supplementing the household income.  When in London she chared for her cousin Malka at a shilling a day.  Likewise she sewed underlinen and stitched slips of fur into caps in the privacy of home and midnight.  For all Mrs. Ansell’s industry, the family had been a typical group of wandering Jews, straying from town to town in search of better things.  The congregation they left (every town which could muster the minimum of ten men for worship boasted its Kehillah) invariably paid their fare to the next congregation, glad to get rid of them so cheaply, and the new Kehillah jumped at the opportunity of gratifying their restless migratory instinct and sent them to a newer.  Thus were they tossed about on the battledores of philanthropy, often reverting to their starting-point, to the disgust of the charitable committees.  Yet Moses always made loyal efforts to find work.  His versatility was marvellous.  There was nothing he could not do badly.  He had been glazier, synagogue beadle, picture-frame manufacturer, cantor, peddler, shoemaker in all branches, coat-seller, official executioner of fowls and cattle, Hebrew teacher, fruiterer, circumciser, professional corpse-watcher, and now he was a tailor out of work.

Unquestionably Malka was right in considering Moses a Schlemihl in comparison with many a fellow-immigrant, who brought indefatigable hand and subtle brain to the struggle for existence, and discarded the prop of charity as soon as he could, and sometimes earlier.