the Talmud.  At times officers and country gentlemen would put up at papa’s inn, and they used to talk a great deal of things which in those days I had never dreamed of; and, of course, it was alluring and moved me to envy.  I used to cry and entreat them to send me to school, but they taught me to read Hebrew and nothing more.  Once I found a Russian newspaper, and took it home with me to make a kite of it.  I was beaten for it, though I couldn’t read Russian.  Of course, fanaticism is inevitable, for every people instinctively strives to preserve its nationality, but I did not know that then and was very indignant. . . .”

Having made such an intellectual observation, Isaac, as he had been, raised his right eyebrow higher than ever in his satisfaction and looked at me, as it were, sideways, like a cock at a grain of corn, with an air as though he would say:  “Now at last you see for certain that I am an intellectual man, don’t you?” After saying something more about fanaticism and his irresistible yearning for enlightenment, he went on: 

“What could I do?  I ran away to Smolensk.  And there I had a cousin who relined saucepans and made tins.  Of course, I was glad to work under him, as I had nothing to live upon; I was barefoot and in rags. . . .  I thought I could work by day and study at night and on Saturdays.  And so I did, but the police found out I had no passport and sent me back by stages to my father. . . .”

Alexandr Ivanitch shrugged one shoulder and sighed.

“What was one to do?” he went on, and the more vividly the past rose up before his mind, the more marked his Jewish accent became.  “My parents punished me and handed me over to my grandfather, a fanatical old Jew, to be reformed.  But I went off at night to Shklov.  And when my uncle tried to catch me in Shklov, I went off to Mogilev; there I stayed two days and then I went off to Starodub with a comrade.”

Later on he mentioned in his story Gonel, Kiev, Byelaya, Tserkov, Uman, Balt, Bendery and at last reached Odessa.

“In Odessa I wandered about for a whole week, out of work and hungry, till I was taken in by some Jews who went about the town buying second-hand clothes.  I knew how to read and write by then, and had done arithmetic up to fractions, and I wanted to go to study somewhere, but I had not the means.  What was I to do?  For six months I went about Odessa buying old clothes, but the Jews paid me no wages, the rascals.  I resented it and left them.  Then I went by steamer to Perekop.”

“What for?”

“Oh, nothing.  A Greek promised me a job there.  In short, till I was sixteen I wandered about like that with no definite work and no roots till I got to Poltava.  There a student, a Jew, found out that I wanted to study, and gave me a letter to the Harkov students.  Of course, I went to Harkov.  The students consulted together and began to prepare me for the technical school.  And, you know, I must say the students that I met there were such that I shall never forget them to the day of my death.  To say nothing of their giving me food and lodging, they set me on the right path, they made me think, showed me the object of life.  Among them were intellectual remarkable people who by now are celebrated.  For instance, you have heard of Grumaher, haven’t you?”