azing at the prayer-book and beginning "Happy are we." He
swallowed the prayers as he said them, half of every word; no matter how
he wrinkled his forehead, he could not expel the stranger thoughts from
his brain, and fix his attention on the prayers. After the service he
tried taking up a book, but it was no good, his head was a jumble of
all the new sciences. By means of the little he had just learned, he
wanted to understand and know everything, to fashion a whole body out of
a single hair, and he thought, and thought, and thought....

Sunday, when the teacher came, Reb Shloimeh told him that he wished to
have a little talk with him. Meantime he sat down to listen. The hour
during which the teacher taught the children was too long for him, and
he scarcely took his eyes off the clock.

"Do you want another pupil?" he asked the teacher, stepping with him
into his own room. He felt as though he were getting red, and he made a
very angry face.

"Why not?" answered the teacher, looking hard into Reb Shloimeh's face.
Reb Shloimeh looked at the floor, his brows, as was usual with him in
those days, drawn together.

"You understand me--a pupil--" he stammered, "you understand--not a
little boy--a pupil--an elderly man--you understand--quite another
sort--"

"Well, well, we shall see!" answered the teacher, smiling.

"I mean myself!" he snapped out with great displeasure, as if he had
been forced to confess some very evil deed. "Well, I have sinned--what
do you want of me?"

"Oh, but I should be delighted!" and the teacher smiled.

"I always said I meant to be a doctor!" said Reb Shloimeh, trying to
joke. But his features contracted again directly, and he began to talk
about the terms, and it was arranged that every day for an hour and a
half the teacher should read to him and explain the sciences. To begin
with, Reb Shloimeh chose physiology, sociology, and mathematical
geography.

* * * * *

Days, weeks, and months have gone by, and Reb Shloimeh has become
depressed, very depressed. He does not sleep at night, he has lost his
appetite, doesn't care to talk to people.

Bad, bitter thoughts oppress him.

For seventy years he had not only known nothing, but, on the contrary,
he had known everything wrong, understood head downwards. And it seemed
to him that if he had known in his youth what he knew now, he would have
lived differently, that his years would have been useful to other