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
boy would let me write a line or two in his copy-book.
Sometimes, too, I would come to school before the schoolmaster
had returned from the morning service at the synagogue, and
practise with pen and ink, following the copy of some of my
classmates. One of my teachers once caught me in the act. He
held me up as an ink-thief and forbade me come to school before
the beginning of exercises
Otherwise my teachers scarcely ever complained of my behavior.
As to the progress I was making in my studies, they admitted,
some even with enthusiasm, that mine was a "good head."
Nevertheless, to be beaten by them was an every-day experience
with me
Overworked, underfed, and goaded by the tongue-lashings of their
wives, these enervated drudges were usually out of sorts.
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