The payment to Reb Monash for a week's tuition ranged between one shilling and eighteenpence. He sometimes accepted ninepence, but on the condition that other parents should not be informed and the market be thus demoralized. He even accepted no payment at all, in cases of extreme indigence, where it meant that a scion of Israel would otherwise run riot in pagan ignorance. The attendances of his pupils were as follows:--In the week-days, a few frantic minutes between morning and afternoon school for the recital of _minchah_, the midday prayer, and more importantly, several long hours in the evening; on the Saturday, once, after dinner. During the evening session, while the maturer boys were biting their pens over their letters home, and the boys less mature were transcribing for page after page a sample line in Reb Monash's own script, _rebbie_ himself dealt with the infants, five, four, three years old. Patiently, gently, the meat skewer he used as a pointer moved from capital to capital. (A safe way to win temporary harbourage in _rebbie's_ good graces was to provide him with a new pointer.) "_Aleph!_" said Reb Monash. "_Aleph!_" piped the little voice. "_Baze!_" "_Baze!_" "_Gimmel, doled!_" "_Gimmel, doled!_" With the young he had enormous patience. When at last they knew all the letters in their consecutive order, his pointer would dart bewilderingly from letter to letter. "_Lange mem, tsadik, coff...._" Ignorance, up to a certain age, Reb Monash could condone. It was inattention against which he maintained a fiery crusade. "What, thou canst not distinguish between _baze_ and _shloss mem_? Playest thou then alleys already? Thou art a lump-Gentile, a _shtik-goy_!" After the youngsters had been thus instructed, a snap of his Prayer Book was the signal for a deathly calm. All the exercise books were closed and put away upon their shelf. Everybody sat down upon the benches round the wall and each face assumed a look of virtue bordering upon imbecility. Reb Monash then produced a thin notebook where in three columns down each page he had written a large number of Hebrew words. These words had, excepting rarely, no connection with each other. One leaped abruptly from "pepper" to "son-in-law" and thence to "chair," "snake," "pomegranate" and "yesterday."