acking bread to
eat. In winter they slept on a pallet and Akiba would pick the straws
out of her wonderfully long and beautiful hair. She was beautiful even
in her rags and tatters, and once Akiba was moved to exclaim: "Oh,
that I had a fitting ornament for thee: a golden image of Jerusalem
the Holy City!" Both indeed were nearest his heart. Once a man came to
the door of their hut and asked for some straw, saying that his wife
was confined to child-bed and he had no couch for her. "Ah, see," said
Akiba to his wife, "there are those even poorer than we. This man has
not even straw to lie on." This seeming poor man, the Rabbis say, was
none other than Elijah, who had come to comfort them in their misery.

_Struggles and Sacrifices for an Education_

THE incident did indeed give them new heart, for until then Akiba
could not summon enough resolution to go off and study while his wife
remained behind in such abject circumstances. Nor could she insist.
But now her old strength came back to her, and she reminded Akiba of
his promise: "Go thou, and study in the Beth-Hamidrash." She must have
felt undoubtedly that there were great possibilities in him, and in
truth she was not mistaken. Akiba, however, in his modesty, had no
confidence that he could master the intricate subtleties of Rabbinic
law. How could he, who had now reached forty years of age without once
attending even an elementary school, hope to make any progress at all
so late in life? One day, musing thus, as he stood by the village
well, his interest was suddenly roused by observing that one of the
stones had a deep hollow, caused probably by the drippings of the
buckets. "Who hollowed out this stone?" he asked; and he was answered:
"Canst thou not read Scripture, Akiba? 'The waters wear the
stones,'--the water, that falls on it continually day after day, has
hollowed out the stone." Immediately Akiba argued _a fortiori_ (Kal
Vahomer) with respect to himself. "If what is soft can cut what is
hard, then the words of the Torah, which are as hard as iron, will
surely impress themselves upon my heart, which is only flesh and
blood." So Akiba repaired forthwith to a _Melammed Tinokoth_, a
teacher of children, and, seated beside his own little son, he began
learning his letters. Akiba held one end of the A. B. C. board and his
son the other.

The elements once mastered, the next step was the Rabbinical academy.
Bitter poverty, however, would not permit Akiba to le