ed.

Preoccupied, cross, with groans and sighs, he went to bed. But he was
restless all night, turning from one side to the other, and groaning.
His old wife tried to cheer him.

"Such weather as it is to-day," she said, and coughed. "I have a pain in
the side, too."

Next morning when the teacher came, Reb Shloimeh inquired with a
displeased expression:

"Well, are you going to tell stories again to-day?"

"We shall not take geography to-day," answered the teacher.

"Have your 'astronomers' found out by calculation on which days we may
learn geography?" asked Reb Shloimeh, with malicious irony.

"No, that's a discovery of mine!" and the teacher smiled.

"And when have 'your' astronomers decreed the study of geography?"
persisted Reb Shloimeh.

"To-morrow."

"To-morrow!" he repeated crossly, and left the room, missing a lesson
for the first time.

Next day the teacher explained the eclipses of the sun and moon to his
pupils. Reb Shloimeh sat with his chair drawn up to the table, and
listened without a movement.

"It is all so exact," the teacher wound up his explanation, "that the
astronomers are able to calculate to a minute _when_ there will be an
eclipse, and have never yet made a mistake."

At these last words Reb Shloimeh nodded in a knowing way, and looked at
the pupils as much as to say, "You ask _me_ about that!"

The teacher went on to tell of comets, planets, and other suns. Reb
Shloimeh snorted, and was continually interrupting the teacher with
exclamations. "If you don't believe me, go and measure for
yourself!"--"If it is not so, call me a liar!"--"Just so!"--"Within one
yard of it!"

Reb Shloimeh repaid his Jewish education with interest. There were not
many learned men in the town like Reb Shloimeh. The Rabbis without
flattery called him "a full basket," and Reb Shloimeh could not picture
to himself the existence of sciences other than "Jewish," and when at
last he did picture it, he would not allow that they were right,
unfalsified and right. He was so far intelligent, he had received a so
far enlightened education, that he could understand how among non-Jews
also there are great men. He would even have laughed at anyone who had
maintained the contrary. But that among non-Jews there should be men as
great as any Jewish ones, that he did _not_ believe!--let alone, of
course, still greater ones.

And now, little by little, Reb Shloimeh began to believe that "their"
learning was not al