Hitherto we had been to heder, to a rebbe; now we were to study with a _lehrer_, a secular teacher.

There was all the difference in the world between the two.
The one taught you Hebrew only, which every girl learned; the other could teach Yiddish and Russian and, some said, even German; and how to write a letter, and how to do sums without a counting-frame, just on a piece of paper; accomplishments which were extremely rare among girls in Polotzk.

But nothing was too high for the grandchildren of Raphael the Russian; they had "good heads," everybody knew.

So we were sent to Reb' Isaiah.
My first school, where I was so proud to be received, was a hovel on the edge of a swamp.

The schoolroom was gray within and without.