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This comedy is set in Boston in the early 1900s and tells the story of a widowed Polish immigrant who begins fearing that he has not earned a proper place in Heaven. He has been in the States many years and has since become a wealthy landlord. But his pursuit of money seems to have cost him his humanity and his chance at eternal happiness as an angry tenant points out. This so worries the landlord that he returns home to tell his daughter that he shall return to his Polish hometown to recapture his good spirit and, in accordance with Jewish tradition, earn a Heavenly reservation by insuring that his daughter marries a brilliant scholar of sacred writings. Once home, he finds such a man and brings him back to his daughter who immediately rejects him because she is determined to marry a genteel American doctor. Since the scholar now lives in the US, he must learn English and so the landlord gets him a tutor who introduces the scholar to the guilty pleasures of secular literature. When the landlord discovers the non-religious books that the scholar has smuggled into the house, he tosses the young man out. Fortunately, by this time, the daughter has taken a liking to the serious youth and helps to broaden his secular knowledge. Romance ensues and by the story's end, everyone finds happiness, including the crotchety old landlord.