secret place I knew of. It
was a storeroom for broken chairs and rusty utensils and dried apples.
Nobody would look for me in that dusty hole. Nobody did look there,
but they looked everywhere else, in the house, and in the yard, and in
the barn, and down the street, and at our neighbors'; and while
everybody was searching and calling for me, and telling each other
when I was last seen, and what I was then doing, I, Mashke, was
bending over the stolen book, rehearsing A, B, C, by the names my
sister had given them; and before anybody hit upon my retreat, I could
spell B-O-G, _Bog_ (God) and K-A-Z-A, _Kaza_ (goat). I did not mind in
the least being caught, for I had my new accomplishment to show off.

I remember the littered place, and the high chest that served as my
table, and the blue glass lamp that lighted my secret efforts. I
remember being brought from there into the firelit room where the
family was assembled, and confusing them all by my recital of the
simple words, B-O-G, _Bog_, and K-A-Z-A, _Kaza_. I was not reproached
for going into hiding at bedtime, and the next day I was allowed to
take part in the Russian lesson.

Alas! there were not many lessons more. Long before we had exhausted
Reb' Isaiah's learning, my sister and I had to give up our teacher,
because the family fortunes began to decline, and luxuries, such as
schooling, had to be cut off. Isaiah the Scribe taught us, in all,
perhaps two terms, in which time we learned Yiddish and Russian, and a
little arithmetic. But little good we had from our ability to read,
for there were no books in our house except prayer-books and other
religious writings, mostly in Hebrew. For our skill in writing we had
as little use, as letter-writing was not an everyday exercise, and
idle writing was not thought of. Our good teacher, however, who had
taken pride in our progress, would not let us lose all that we had
learned from him. Books he could not lend us, because he had none
himself; but he could, and he did, write us out a beautiful "copy"
apiece, which we could repeat over and over, from time to time, and so
keep our hands in.

I wonder that I have forgotten the graceful sentences of my "copy";
for I wrote them out just about countless times. It was in the form of
a letter, written on lovely pink paper (my sister's was blue), the
lines taking the shape of semicircles across the page; and that
without any guide lines showing. The script, of course, was
perfect-