A female teacher was engaged for my mother, at three kopecks a week, to teach her the Hebrew prayers; and my grandmother, herself a better scholar than the teacher, taught her writing in addition.

My mother was quick to learn, and expressed an ambition to study Russian.

She teased and coaxed, and her mother pleaded for her, till my grandfather was persuaded to send her to a tutor.

But the fates were opposed to my mother's education.

On the first day at school, a sudden inflammation of the eyes blinded my mother temporarily, and although the distemper vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, it was taken as an omen, and my mother was not allowed to return to her lessons.
Still she did not give up.