Letter from Rachel Morris, Taube’s sister-in-law: 10 September, 1913
My dear brother-in-law, Tuvye, and my dear sister-in-law, Taube – may you all live well with your children. To begin with, I want to give you mazeltov with the birth of your new daughter. May you raise her with much joy and luck; and to my dear sister-in-law, you need not be ashamed, you are not fifty years yet, it may happen ’til fifty, so it has happened to you also.
Zudgala, end of Shabbat, Vayerei, 7 November 1914
My dear Tuvye and Taube, I wish to inform you that our parents, sisters, and mother-in-law, and all the family are all well.
We wish that business will improve. The flax merchants have just survived a year of crisis. A bundle of flax of forty pounds we were lucky to sell at a very small loss for a hundred roubles. In summer, the loss would have been very much bigger, but a certain spinner had run short of flax and we received a good price, and immediately afterwards the price of flax went down again, and in any case nobody wants to buy old flax and so we were lucky to sell ours.