A GLOOMY WEDDING 101
head like a fume. She sat between the two ladies, feeling cramped and shut in, unable to stir, and would gladly have gone away. Only whither? Where should she, the bridegroom's mother, be sitting, if not near the bride, at the upper end of the room ? But all the ladies sitting there are half -naked. Should she sit near the door? That would never do. And Gittel remained sitting, in great embarrassment, between the two women, and looked on at the reception, and saw nothing but a room full of decolletees, ladies and girls.
Gittel felt more and more uncomfortable, it made her quite faint to look at them.
"One can get over the girls, young things, because a girl has got to please, although no Jewish daughter ought to show herself to everyone like that, but what are you to do with present-day children, especially in a dissolute city like Warsaw? But young women, and women who have husbands and children, and no need, thank God, to please anyone, how are they not ashamed before God and other people and their own children, to come to a wedding half-naked, like loose girls in a public house? Jewish daughters, who ought not to be seen uncovered by the four walls of their room, to come like that to a wedding! To a Jewish wedding! . . . Tpfu, tpfu, I'd like to spit at this newfangled world, may God not punish me for these words ! It is enough to make one faint to see such a display among Jews!"
After the ceremony under the canopy, which was erected in the centre of the room, the company sat down to the table, and Gittel was again seated at the top, between the two women before mentioned, whose per- fumes went to her head.
