SLACK TIMES THEY SLEEP
Despite the fact of the winter nights being long and dark as the Jewish exile, the Breklins go to bed at dusk.
But you may as well know that when it is dusk outside in the street, the Breklins are already "way on" in the night, because they live in a basement, separated from the rest of the world by an air-shaft, and when the sun gathers his beams round him before setting, the first to be summoned are those down the Breklins' shaft, because of the time required for them to struggle out again.
The same thing in the morning, only reversed. People don't usually get up, if they can help it, before it is really light, and so it comes to pass that when other people have left their beds, and are going about their business, the Breklins are still asleep and making the long, long night longer yet.
If you ask me, "How is it they don't wear their sides out with lying in bed?" I shall reply: They do rise with aching sides, and if you say, "How can people be so lazy?" I can tell you, They don't do it out of laziness, and they lie awake a great part of the time.
What's the good of lying in bed if one isn't asleep?
There you have it in a nutshell it's a question of the economic conditions. The Breklins are very poor, their life is a never-ending struggle with poverty, and they have come to the conclusion that the cheapest way of waging it, and especially in winter, is to lie in
