I say
nothing of the prayers she took good care I should recite every morning.
She was always lecturing me to be even half as good as my father--peace
be unto him! And whenever she looked at me, she said I was exactly like
him--may I have longer years than he! And her eyes grew moist. Her face
grew curiously careworn, and had a mournful expression.

I hope he will forgive me, I mean my father, from the other world, but I
could not understand what sort of a man he had been. From what my mother
told of him, he was always either praying or studying. Had he never been
drawn, like me, out into the open, on summer mornings, when the sun was
not burning yet, but was just beginning to show in the sky, marching
rapidly onwards, a fiery angel, in a fiery chariot, drawn by fiery
horses, into whose brilliant, burning, guinea-gold faces it was
impossible to look? I ask you what taste have the week-day prayers on
such a morning? What sort of a pleasure is it to sit and read in a
stuffy room, when the golden sun is burning, and the air is hot as an
iron frying-pan? At such a time, you are tempted to run down the hill,
to the river--the beautiful river that is covered with a green slime. A
peculiar odour, as of a warm bath, comes from the distance. You want to
undress and jump into the warm water. Under the trees it is cool and the
mud is soft and slippery. And the curious insects that live at the
bottom of the river whirl around and about before your eyes. And
curious, long-legged flies slip and slide on the surface of the water.
At such a time one desires to swim over to the other side--over to where
the green flags grow, their yellow and white stalks shimmering in the
sun. A green, fresh fern looks up at you, and you go after it,
plash-plash into the water, hands down, and feet up, so that people
might think you were swimming. I ask you again, what pleasure is it to
sit in a little room on a summer's evening, when the great dome of the
sky is dropping over the other side of the town, lighting up the spire
of the church, the shingle roofs of the baths, and the big windows of
the synagogue. And on the other side of the town, on the common, the
goats are bleating, and the lambs are frisking, the dust rising to the
heavens, the frogs croaking. There is a tearing and a shrieking and a
tumult as at a regular fair. Who thinks of praying at such a time? But
if you talk to my mother, she will tell you that her husband--peace be
unto him!--d