In the months of July and August of
every year, thousands of Jewish children were knocking at the doors of
the _gymnazia_ and universities, but only tens and hundreds obtained
admission. In the towns of the Pale where the Jews form from thirty to
eighty per cent of the total population, the admission, of Jewish pupils
to the _gymnazia_ and "Real schools" was limited to ten per cent, so
that the majority of Jewish children were deprived of a secondary
education.

The position of the _gymnazium_ and "Real school" graduates who were
unable to continue their studies in the institutions of higher learning
was particularly tragic. Many of these unfortunates addressed personal
appeals to the Minister of Public Instruction, Dyelanov, who, being
good-natured, would, despite his reactionary proclivities, frequently
sanction the admission of the petitioners over and above the school
norm. But the majority of the young men, barred from the colleges, found
themselves compelled to go abroad in search of education, and, being
generally without means, suffered untold hardships.

Nevertheless, the cruel restrictions could not suppress the need for
education in a people with an ancient culture. Those that had failed to
gain admission to the _gymnazia_ completed the prescribed course of
studies at home, under the guidance of private tutors or by private
study, and afterwards presented themselves for examination for the
"maturity certificate" [1] as "externs," braving all the difficulties of
this thorny path. Having successfully passed their secondary course,
they found again their way barred as soon as they wished to enter the
universities, and the "martyrs of learning" had no choice left except to
take up their pilgrim staff and travel abroad. Year in, year out, two
processions of emigrants wended their way from Russia to the West: the
one was travelling across the Atlantic, in search of bread and liberty;
the other was headed towards Germany, Austria, England, and France, in
search of a higher education. The former were driven from their homes by
a peculiar _interdictio ignis et aquae_; the other--by an _interdictio
scientiae_.

[Footnote 1: The name given in Russian (and German) to the diploma of a
_gymnazium_.]

Having closed the avenues of higher education to the bulk of Russian
Jewry, the Government now went a step further and contrived to
dispossess even those Jews who had already managed to obtain a higher
education, in spit