“Years ago this dear old lady came from Russia to end her days in the Holy Land.  She is well provided for by her children, so she has the time and means to lead a happy and useful life here, and does a lot of good quietly, by the cheery, sensible way she often gives a “helping hand” to those who need it.

“She so understands all our fun that we sometimes forget she is old.  We just talk things over with her as we would with our young friends.  Not only we girls, but young married women, just love spending part of the Sabbath afternoons with her.  The room is often so full that we have to sit cross-legged, like the Turks, on the marble floor, which in summer time is quite the coolest seat.

“We then play ‘Nuts.’  Each one puts a certain number into a cap, but to win the game one has to be very quick and sharp:  it is really quite exciting.  What we like best is when the old lady sits amongst us and reads us a tale from a book, or some of the papers sent her from abroad.  The stories are very tantalizing, for they always leave off at the most interesting part, and then we may have to wait a week or two before we get the next number!  During the week we try to imagine what the next chapter will be like.

“Sometimes she reads from the Ethics of the Fathers—­those wise sayings of the ancient Rabbis.  I remember last week she told us of one of the Rabbis who wrote that ’those who control or overcome their hasty tempers are greater than those who take a city from an enemy,’ She, as usual, asks us to give our views on what she has read, and an excited discussion follows.  Those of us who naturally have a calm, good temper said that they did not agree with the Rabbi, because they did not think it at all hard to keep their temper when provoked.  Others, who had hasty passionate tempers, said the Rabbi was quite right:  it would be far easier, they felt sure, to take a city than to control their tempers, for the whole nation would help them to take a city, as it was considered a grand thing to do, but very few people would help them to control their tempers.  In fact, even their relatives and friends provoked them to be hasty and passionate.  When provoked or irritated the blood rushes so quickly to the head that it makes it very, very hard to remain calm, and then we often say or do things we are really sorry for afterwards.

“As we could not agree, we turned to the old lady, for she is full of wisdom and understanding.  She tried to pacify us, for we were nearly on the verge of quarreling.  She said that if, when young, we tried, with the Almighty’s help, to keep our hasty tempers under control, it would be easier to do so every time we were provoked, but the older we were before beginning, the more difficult it would be to be successful.  Even then we had always to keep a watch over ourselves, for one of our wise sages wrote:  ’One is never sure of himself till the day of his death.’  We all saw the wisdom of her advice, and made up our minds that we must all help each other, for very often the calm quiet natures are those who love teasing and provoking the hasty-tempered ones, for the fun of seeing them get into a temper; and this, we realized after her talk with us, was not pleasing to God.