The Railroad Stories

Sholem Aleichem · 1902 CE · Short Story · Yiddish · Victorian

A commercial traveller riding third class on the branch lines of the Pale sets down what his fellow passengers tell him between stations: a father whose son got into the gymnasium, a town competing over which resident has been most thoroughly ruined, a conductor running a racket, a killing reported at second hand. The narrator rarely comments and never intervenes. Serialized from 1902 and darkened by the pogroms of 1905.

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