ceiling was
decorated with bundles of goose quills stuck in under the rafters. A
rough table stood in the middle of the room, with a long bench on
either side. That was the schoolroom complete. In my eyes, on that
first morning, it shone with a wonderful light, a strange glory that
penetrated every corner, and made the stained logs fair as tinted
marble; and the windows were not too small to afford me a view of a
large new world.

Room was made for the new pupils on the bench, beside the teacher. We
found our inkwells, which were simply hollows scooped out in the thick
table top. Reb' Isaiah made us very serviceable pens by tying the pen
points securely to little twigs; though some of the pupils used
quills. The teacher also ruled our paper for us, into little squares,
like a surveyor's notebook. Then he set us a copy, and we copied, one
letter in each square, all the way down the page. All the little girls
and the middle-sized girls and the pretty big girls copied letters in
little squares, just so. There were so few of us that Reb' Isaiah
could see everybody's page by just leaning over. And if some of our
cramped fingers were clumsy, and did not form the loops and curves
accurately, all he had to do was to stretch out his hand and rap with
his ruler on our respective knuckles. It was all very cosey, with the
inkwells that could not be upset, and the pens that grew in the woods
or strutted in the dooryard, and the teacher in the closest touch with
his pupils, as I have just told. And as he labored with us, and the
hours drew themselves out, he was comforted by the smell of his dinner
cooking in some little hole adjoining the schoolroom, and by the sound
of his good Leah or Rachel or Deborah (I don't remember her name)
keeping order among his little ones. She kept very good order, too, so
that most of the time you could hear the scratching of the laborious
pens accompanied by the croaking of the frogs in the swamp.

Although my sister and I began our studies at the same time, and
progressed together, my parents did not want me to take up new
subjects as fast as Fetchke did. They thought my health too delicate
for much study. So when Fetchke had her Russian lesson I was told to
go and play. I am sorry to say that I was disobedient on these
occasions, as on many others. I did not go and play; I looked on, I
listened, when Fetchke rehearsed her lesson at home. And one evening I
stole the Russian primer and repaired to a