so short.

My helping hand was extended also to my smaller cousins, Mendele and
Perele. I played lotto with Mendele and let him beat me; I found him
when he was lost, and I helped him play tricks on our elders. Perele,
the baby, was at times my special charge, and I think she did not
suffer in my hands. I was a good nurse, though my methods were
somewhat original.

Uncle Solomon was often away on business, and in his absence Cousin
Hirshel was my hero. Hirshel was only a little older than I, but he
was a pupil in the high school, and wore the student's uniform, and
knew nearly as much as my uncle, I thought. When he buckled on his
satchel of books in the morning, and strode away straight as a
soldier,--no heder boy ever walked like that,--I stood in the doorway
and worshipped his retreating steps. I met him on his return in the
late afternoon, and hung over him when he laid out his books for his
lessons. Sometimes he had long Russian pieces to commit to memory. He
would walk up and down repeating the lines out loud, and I learned as
fast as he. He would let me hold the book while he recited, and a
proud girl was I if I could correct him.

My interest in his lessons amused him; he did not take me seriously.
He looked much like his father, and twinkled his eyes at me in the
same way and made fun of me, too. But sometimes he condescended to set
me a lesson in spelling or arithmetic,--in reading I was as good as
he,--and if I did well, he praised me and went and told the family
about it; but lest I grow too proud of my achievements, he would sit
down and do mysterious sums--I now believe it was algebra--to which I
had no clue whatever, and which duly impressed me with a sense of my
ignorance.

There were other books in the house than school-books. The Hebrew
books, of course, were there, as in other Jewish homes; but I was no
longer devoted to the Psalms. There were a few books about in Russian
and in Yiddish, that were neither works of devotion nor of
instruction. These were story-books and poems. They were a great
surprise to me and a greater delight. I read them hungrily, all there
were--a mere handful, but to me an overwhelming treasure. Of all those
books I remember by name only "Robinson Crusoe." I think I preferred
the stories to the poems, though poetry was good to recite, walking up
and down, like Cousin Hirshel. That was my introduction to secular
literature, but I did not understand it at the time.

When