religious education I had become acquainted with a considerable
number of them

Sometimes when a teacher or his wife tried to oust me, I would
clutch at the table and struggle sullenly until they yielded

I may explain that instruction in these cheders was confined to the
Hebrew Old Testament and rudiments of the Talmud, the
exercises lasting practically all day and part of the evening. The
class-room was at the same time the bedroom, living-room, and
kitchen of the teacher's family. His wife and children were always
around. These cheder teachers were usually a haggard-looking lot
with full beards and voices hoarse with incessant shouting.

A special man generally came for an hour to teach the boys to
write. As he was to be paid separately, I was not included. The
feeling of envy, abasement, and self-pity with which I used to
watch the other boys ply their quills is among the most painful
memories of my childhood

During the penmanship lesson I was generally kept busy in other
directions.

The teacher's wife would make me help her with her housework,
go her errands, or mind the baby (in one instance I became so
attached to the baby that when I was expelled I missed it keenly)

I seized every opportunity to watch the boys write and would
practise the art, with chalk, on my mother's table or bed, on the
door of our basement room, on many a gate or fence. Sometimes a