Jacob Steinberg was born in Bila Tserkva, but ran off to Odessa when he was 14, joining Bialik and other Jewish intellectuals of the Hebrew literary circle there.
He also simultaneously published poems and short stories in Yiddish, which were collected in the book Gezamltte font ("Selected", Warsaw, 1909).
Yaakov Steinberg was originally a bilingual writer, but later abandoned Yiddish for ideological reasons and wrote only in Hebrew.
The family tells the heroine a lie about her future husband, describing him as a young widower and a tobacco dealer.
The protagonist of the story is Sarah, the daughter of a rabbi, for whom the family chooses a suitable groom, Berl, the owner of a tobacco shop.
Sara asks Berl to accompany her through the goyish neighborhood to Ulyana's house, but he leaves town on a false pretext.
Afraid to walk alone through the neighborhood full of unfriendly boys and vicious dogs, Ulyana decides to commit suicide.