contrary, the officials of the institution were exceedingly kind and sympathetic. They received me with open arms as the orphan son of the gallant Corporal Schwartzfeld, of whose heroic record they were well aware, and as the ward of the well-connected and influential Colonel Mentchikoff. The fact of my being a Hebrew was hardly referred to, or, if any casual mention thereof was made, it was accompanied with the statement that that would undoubtedly make no difference in my case, and that, in view of my exceptional recommendations, I need anticipate no difficulty in obtaining a satisfactory appointment when once I had completed my course. “I took leave of my benefactors with tears and embraces—and to this day I cannot think of Colonel Mentchikoff and his good, kind family without being deeply moved, for they were noble, true-hearted people, and very good to me—and took up my studies at the military academy. I will not refer at length to my career at the military academy, for now it makes no difference whether I did well or poorly, and, besides, it were foolish for the poor scissors-grinder to boast of the past glories of his life. Suffice it to say that I more than held my own in every branch of instruction, and made, besides, a specialty of three subjects. I devoted myself with great zeal to the pursuit of military engineering and languages, and also sought to acquire an expert knowledge of the manufacture and preparation of weapons, both of those which cut and those which discharge projectiles. The latter two branches of knowledge I pursued with the idea that they would be particularly useful if ever I became a member of the general staff or obtained some high military political post, when a knowledge of languages, particularly of the Slavonic tongues, and ability to criticise the quality of weapons furnished to the army would be invaluable. I thought of myself as a soldier, and a soldier only. To other matters I hardly devoted a thought, so absorbed was I in my preparations for my prospective vocation—least of all to religious loyalty or Hebraic traditions. During all the seven years of my attendance at the military academy I never entered a synagogue—in fact, I would not have known what to do had I gone there, for I was utterly ignorant of Hebrew and knew nothing of the mode or manner of worship among the Jews; I never kept a Jewish holiday, never was present at a religious gathering of any kind, for I had given up also my former curiosity concerning Christianity; I did not associate with or even know any Hebrew; in short, to all intents and purposes, I forgot that I was a Jew or had any need to consider the question of my relation to my ancestral faith, and my friends and colleagues at the academy, who were all very liberal-minded and tolerant, did not remind me of it in any way. Personally I was popular with both teachers and students, and, when the last year of the course began, I received an