ength began the Rabbi; "tell me why you appear so
dejected?"

"You will reproach me if I confess the cause," answered the boy,
tearfully.

"You should know me better," answered the Rabbi. "You ought to be aware
that I am interested in your welfare."

"Well, then," sobbed Mendel, no longer able to repress his feelings, "I
am unhappy because of my ignorance. I wish to become wise."

"And then?" asked the Rabbi.

The boy opened his eyes to their full extent. He did not comprehend the
question.

"After you have acquired great wisdom, what then?" repeated the Rabbi.

"Then I shall be happy and content."

The Rabbi stopped and pointed to a dilapidated bridge which crossed the
Dnieper at a place to which their walk had led them. Sadly he called his
pupil's attention to a sign which hung at the entrance of the structure
and which bore the following legend: "Toll--For a horse, 15 kopecks; for
a hog, 3 kopecks; for a Jew, 10 kopecks."

"Read that," he said; "and see how futile must be the efforts of wisdom
in a country whose rulers issue such decrees."

"Perhaps you are right," said the boy, sorrowfully; "and yet I feel that
God has not given me my intellect to keep it in ignorance and
superstition. It must expand. Look, Rabbi, at this river. They have
dammed it to keep its waters back; but further down, the stream leaps
over the obstruction and forces its way onward. Its confinement makes it
but sparkle the more after it has once acquired its freedom. Is not the
mind of man like this river? Can you confine it and prevent its onward
course?"

The Rabbi gazed with looks of mingled astonishment and admiration upon
the boy at his side.

The boy continued:

"I would become wise like you and Pesach Harretzki. I would acquire the
art of reading other works besides our ancient folios. Rabbi, will you
teach me?"

"Has Harretzki been putting these new ideas into your head?" asked the
old man.

"No; they were there before he came. You yourself have often told me:
'Study rather to fill your mind than your coffers.' I have some of
Harretzki's books, however, and at night when I cannot sleep I take them
out of my closet and look at them. But they are not in Hebrew and I
cannot read them. Rabbi, I beg of you to teach me."

Rabbi Jeiteles was in a quandary. He hated the bigotry and
narrow-mindedness which forbade the study of any subject but the
time-honored Talmud. He himself had been as anxious as was Mendel to
strive a