ch of a prospect from the gateway, but in
that early hour everything looked new and large to me, even the little
houses that yesterday had been so familiar. The houses, when creatures
went in and out of them, were merely conventional objects; in the soft
gray morning they were themselves creatures. Some stood up straight,
and some leaned, and some looked as if they saw me. And then over the
dewy gardens rose the sun, and the light spread and grew over
everything, till it shone on my bare feet. And in my heart grew a
great wonder, and I was ready to cry, my world was so strange and
sweet about me. In those moments, I think, I could have loved somebody
as well as I loved later--somebody who cared to get up secretly, and
stand and see the sun come up.

Was there not somebody who got up before the sun? Was there not Mishka
the shepherd? Aye, that was an early riser; but I knew he was no
sun-worshipper. Before the chickens stirred, before the lazy maid let
the cow out of the barn, I heard his rousing horn, its distant notes
harmonious with the morning. Barn doors creaked in response to
Mishka's call, and soft-eyed cattle went willingly out to meet him,
and stood in groups in the empty square, licking and nosing each
other; till Mishka's little drove was all assembled, and he tramped
out of town behind them, in a cloud of dust.

CHAPTER VI

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

History shows that in all countries where Jews have equal rights with
the rest of the people, they lose their fear of secular science, and
learn how to take their ancient religion with them from century to
awakening century, dropping nothing by the way but what their growing
spirit has outgrown. In countries where progress is to be bought only
at the price of apostasy, they shut themselves up in their synagogues,
and raise the wall of extreme separateness between themselves and
their Gentile neighbors. There is never a Jewish community without its
scholars, but where Jews may not be both intellectuals and Jews, they
prefer to remain Jews.

The survival in Russia of mediaeval injustice to Jews was responsible
for the narrowness of educational standards in the Polotzk of my time.
Jewish scholarship, as we have seen, was confined to a knowledge of
the Hebrew language and literature, and even these limited stores of
learning were not equally divided between men and women. In the
mediaeval position of the women of Polotzk education really had no
place. A gi