joined him. That was my first taste of the bitter cup called
jealousy

I went home a lovelorn boy

I took to practising "taps." I was continually trumpeting. I kept at it
so strenuously that my mother had many a quarrel with our
room-mates because of it

My efforts went for nothing, however. My rival, and with him my
lady love, continued to sneer at my performances

I had only one teacher who never beat me, or any of the other boys.
Whatever anger we provoked in him would spend itself in threats,
and even these he often turned to a joke, in a peculiar vein of his
own

"If you don't behave I'll cut you to pieces," he would say. "I'll just
cut you to tiny bits and put you into my pipe and you'll go up in
smoke." Or, "I'll give you such a thrashing that you won't be able
to sit down, stand up, or lie down. The only thing you'll be able to
do is to fly--to the devil."

This teacher used me as a living advertisement for his school. He
would take me from house to house, flaunting my recitations and
interpretations. Very often the passage which he thus made me
read was a lesson I had studied under one of his predecessors, but
I never gave him away

Every cheder had its king. As a rule, it was the richest boy in the