Arrived there, she stripped me half-naked and, pointing at the
discoloration on my arm, she said, with ominous composure:
"Look! Whose work is it?"

"Mine," Shmerl answered, without removing his long-stemmed
pipe from his wide mouth. He was no coward

"And you are proud of it, are you?" "If you don't like it you can
take your ornament of a son along with you.

Clear out, you witch!"

She flew at him and they clenched. When they had separated,
some of his hair was in her hand, while her arms, as she
subsequently owned to me, were marked with the work of his
expert fingers.

Another schoolmaster had a special predilection for digging the
huge nail of his thumb into the side of his victim, a peculiarity for
which he had been named "the Cossack," his famous thumb being
referred to by the boys as his spear. He had a passion for inventing
new and complex modes of punishment, his spear figuring in most
of them. One of his methods of inflicting pain was to slap the
boy's face with one hand and to prod his side with the thumb of
the other, the slaps and the thrusts alternating rhythmically. This
heartless wretch was an abject coward. He was afraid of thunder,
of rats, spiders, dogs, and, above all, of his wife, who would call
him indecent names in our presence. I abhorred him, yet when he
was thus humiliated I felt pity for him His wife kept a stand on a
neighboring street corner, where she sold cheap cakes and candy,