t
our own home. We sat one on each side of the rebbe, reading the Hebrew
sentences turn and turn about.

When we left off reading by rote and Reb' Lebe began to reveal the
mysteries to us, I was so eager to know all that was in my book that
the lesson was always too short. I continued reading by the hour,
after the rebbe was gone, though I understood about one word in ten.
My favorite Hebrew reading was the Psalms. Verse after verse I chanted
to the monotonous tune taught by Reb' Lebe, rocking to the rhythm of
the chant, just like the rebbe. And so ran the song of David, and so
ran the hours by, while I sat by the low window, the world erased from
my consciousness.

What I thought I do not remember; I only know that I loved the sound
of the words, the full, dense, solid sound of them, to the meditative
chant of Reb' Lebe. I pronounced Hebrew very well, and I caught some
mechanical trick of accent and emphasis, which was sufficiently like
Reb' Lebe's to make my reading sound intelligent. I had a clue to the
general mood of the subject from the few Psalms I had actually
translated, and drawing on my imagination for details, I was able to
read with so much spirit that ignorant listeners were carried away by
my performance. My mother tells me, indeed, that people used to stop
outside my window to hear me read. Of this I have not the slightest
recollection, so I suppose I was an unconscious impostor. Certain I am
that I thought no ignoble thoughts as I chanted the sacred words; and
who can say that my visions were not as inspiring as David's? He was a
shepherd before he became a king. I was an ignorant child in the
Ghetto, but I was admitted at last to the society of the best; I was
given the freedom of all America. Perhaps the "stuff that dreams are
made of" is the same for all dreamers.

When we came to read Genesis I had the great advantage of a complete
translation in Yiddish. I faithfully studied the portion assigned in
Hebrew, but I need no longer wait for the next lesson to know how the
story ends. I could read while daylight lasted, if I chose, in the
Yiddish. Well I remember that Pentateuch, a middling thick octavo
volume, in a crumbly sort of leather cover; and how the book opened of
itself at certain places, where there were pictures. My father tells
me that when I was just learning to translate single words, he found
me one evening poring over the _humesh_ and made fun of me for
pretending to read; whereupon